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LECTUKES 



• AND 



MISCELLANIES. 



BY 



H. W. FBEELAND, 



OF CH. CH. OXFORD M.A., AND LINCOLN'S INN. 




V 

LONDON: & 

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, and ROBERTS, 
PATERNOSTER-ROW. 

1857. 



711 sU 



LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, 
AND CHARING CROSS. 



TO 
THE MEMORY 

OF 

JOSEPH HUME, 

A LIBERAL, 

A FEARLESS, HONEST, INDEPENDENT MAN, 

THE AUTHOE 

RESPECTEULLY INSCRIBES 

THIS VOLUME. 



aS 



( ™ ) 



A TRIBUTE. 



I place upon ray page an honoiu-'d name, 

Symbolical of independent fame ; 

Tlie name of one who, 'mid corruption, stood 

Th' unyielding champion of his country's good ; 

An upright man, and great, without pretence, 

In fearless honesty and common sense. 

High o'er the bitterest taunts of fierce debate, 

Proud Noble's scorn, and Faction's envious hate. 

His spirit rose ; no cringing flatterer he ; 

No sycophant of mere Nobility. 

Pure through his veins the blood of Freedom ran ; 

While toil achiev'd what Patriot's heart began. 

His name I place upon my page, yet weep 
O'er zeal now quench'd in Death's unbroken sleep, 
And bending low, the mourner's garb assume, 
With Truth and Freedom o'er the grave of Hume. 



" But chief be steady in a noble end, 
And show mankind that Truth has yet a friend." 

Brown, Essay on Satire. 

" King out the old, ring in. the new, 
Bing happy bells across the snow : 
The year is going, let him go ; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true." — Tennyson. 

M Those are good words that are true words." 

Erasmus, Colloq. L'Estrange, p. 126. 

" To every poet, to every writer we might say : Be true, if you 
would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine 
earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his 
own heart ; and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by 
the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him." — Carlvle. 



( « ) 



PREFACE. 



A portion of the Lecture on Literary Impostures 
was delivered in 1852, before the members of the 
Chichester Literary Society and Mechanics' Institute. 
I have subsequently revised it, and added somewhat 
to its length, in the hope that I should thereby render 
it more practical and useful. I have also added an 
Appendix, containing extracts from different authors 
upon subjects alluded to incidentally in the Lecture. 
My object throughout has been to show, as far as pos- 
sible, by means of Literary Illustrations, that Free In- 
quiry is essential to the cause of Truth ; — that Private 
Judgment is not merely a right, but a duty also, and a 
necessity. Should I prove successful in my endeavour 
to stir up those whom my remarks may reach to inde- 
pendent mental efforts, and to fearlessness in the 
pursuit of Truth, I shall feel that I have done some 
service to a cause which I have much at heart. 

A portion of the Lecture on the Life and Writings 



x PREFACE. 

of Lamartine was delivered before the members of the 
Society above referred to in March, 1854. 

The Miscellaneous Papers and Notices are selected 
from those which the Author has sent at different 
times, as an amateur contributor, to the columns of the 
Press. He reprints them, not because he over-estimates 
their importance, but because he hopes that, though 
short, they may be found to contain something in the 
shape of comment or of extract, either practically useful 
or interesting in a literary point of view. 



( si ) 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

LlTERAKY IMPOSTUKES, LeCTUKE ON 1 

Lamartine, Life and Writings of, Lecture on . . . . 73 

■ Article on 170 

St. James's Literary and Scientific Society, 

Remarks on 174 

Happiness, Adderley's Essay on . . . . . 181 

Fleet's Tales and Sketches 188 

Tennyson's In Memoriam 194 

Knox's Game Birds and Wild Fowl 201 

Croly's Scenes from Scripture 208 

Faris Shidiak, his Poem addressed to the Queen . . . . 215 

Sol wan ; or, Waters of Comfort 221 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 



Whex invited by your Committee to place myself in 
the position which I at present occupy, I felt some 
little hesitation in complying with their request. I 
felt that to occupy, with advantage to an audience, the 
position which I at present fill, demanded many popu- 
lar qualifications, to the possession of which I could 
make no pretension. Compliance, however, seemed a 
pleasing duty, and I consented, well knowing that I 
should have a critical, but, at the same time, an indul- 
gent audience. 

In looking for a subject on which I might address 
you, I was anxious to find one which might make our 
present meeting an occasion upon which, while inviting 
your attention to matters of literary interest, I might 
also incidentally direct it to some of those great prac- 
tical purposes which it is the leading object, and, at 
the same time, the glorious privilege of institutions of 
this character to promote. 

First and foremost among those purposes are the 
following : to associate in the intercourse of mind with 

B 



2 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

mind men of every class and station — to facilitate in- 
quiry — to promote research, and to serve by so doing 
the sacred cause of Truth — to strengthen and to ad- 
vance the independence of the individual judgment — 
to elevate the feelings and to refine the taste. Should 
my efforts in any way contribute to these ends I shall 
rejoice in the result, and feel grateful for your attention. 

But let me, in the first place, warn you, particularly 
my younger hearers, against relying over much upon 
external aid. Mind must educate itself. Lecturers 
and schoolmasters may point the way, but industry, 
research, and last not least, an earnest longing after 
Truth, are the means by which all great things have 
been and must be accomplished. Start not at the 
apparent magnitude of any intellectual task. Moderate 
talents, combined with energetic industry, and a steady 
use of opportunities, will enable most men to achieve 
results which indolence delights to call impossible. 
" Not by force, but by the frequency of its fall, the 
drop of water hollows out the hardest stone.*" As was 
said by Chatterton, whose productions will be noticed 
presently, " God has sent his creatures into the world 
with arms long enough to reach anything if they will 
be at the trouble." 

An accidental circumstance led me to select the 
subject which I have chosen for this evening's lecture. 
A large folio volume, in Arabic and Italian, was offered 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 3 

me, just before the time at which I was requested to 
give a lecture, by a bookseller who has procured for 
me a variety of works on Oriental literature and his- 
tory. Some misgivings which I felt induced me to 
decline to purchase it, until I had made inquiries 
respecting its authenticity. It proved to be a literary 
fraud, and, having thus been led to inquire into the 
subject of literary impostures generally, I have selected 
them as a curious and not uninstructive theme for the 
remarks which I have now to offer. 

The forgeries by the Abbe Vella, one of which is 
embodied in the volume before alluded to, coincide 
very nearly, in point of time, with three other forgeries 
of a very remarkable character — that of the so-called 
Ossian's Poems by Macpherson ; that of the Rowley 
Poems, and other Papers, by Thomas Chatterton ; and 
that of the Shakspeare Plays and Papers by William 
Henry Ireland. These forgeries all occurred in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century. To the first 
three I shall principally confine myself, and as proba- 
bly many of my hearers are not familiar with their 
attendant circumstances, I shall briefly give the lead- 
ing incidents, and offer a few practical comments on 
the history of each. 

First in point of time, and also of importance with 
reference to the controversy which it occasioned, and 
the critical ability whi^.h it called forth, is the forgery 

b 2 



4 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

by Macpherson of the so-called Ossian's Poems. A 
controversy in which Johnson, with the three histo- 
rians, Gibbon, Hume, and Lairg, took part, and in 
which, that a jury of poets might judge a poet, Scott 
and Moore embarked and gave their verdict against 
the defendant, involves matters of no common character, 
of no ephemeral or transient interest. A condensed 
and very able and fair account of it is given under the 
head of Ossian in the seventh edition of the ' Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica,' and Laing's Dissertation on the 
subject is appended to the fourth volume of his ' His- 
tory of Scotland.' In Bos well's ' Life of Johnson,' in 
Burton's ' Life of Hume,' and in the sixth volume of 
the ' Edinburgh Review,' you will find interesting 
notices of this fraud. Plume's Essay on the genuine- 
ness of the poems, of many arguments contained in 
which I have availed myself, is given in an Appendix 
to the first volume of Burton's work. This Essay is 
a posthumous publication, and Burton says : * " It is 
probable that the sole reason why Hume never pub- 
lished this detection was a kindly feeling to his friend 
Dr. Blair, against whom he might not wish to appear 
in a controversy where the critical powers of the 
latter would be so severely tested." Two Prize 
Essays on this subject, published in the sixteenth 
volume of the * Transactions of the Royal Irish 
* Vol. ii. p. 86. 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 5 

Academy,' are also well worthy of perusal. To these 
it is desirable to refer, because they furnish many 
useful hints towards the formation of those habits of 
research, as well as independent critical thinking, 
which are in the highest degree essential to the 
separation of Truth from Error. They show fully, 
though I can only glance at them, the modes of 
dealing with internal as well as external evidence. 
They show how any man who really longs for Truth 
may put the veracity of a writer fully and fairly to 
the test. They show the sort of things that we should 
look for, when we have before us the work of any 
author who may be suspected of dishonesty. 

The facts as regards the Ossianic poems are shortly 
as follows. In the year 1760 Macpherson's first 
pretended translations from the Gaelic or Erse lan- 
guage made their appearance. They attracted great 
attention in the literary world, and a subscription was 
entered into to enable Mr. Macpherson to travel into 
the Highlands, and collect those larger and more 
complete poems which he represented as existing there. 
The result was the successive publication of two long 
epic poems, ' Fingal' and ' Temora,' with other 
Ossianic fragments. These poems were highly ad- 
mired and praised, and the national predilections of 
the Scotch contributed largely to their success. Gray 
the poet, who possessed a fine and cultivated taste, is 



6 LITEEAEY IMPOSTURES. 

known to have thought favourably of them, and they 
have been translated into many European languages. 
The Germans alone have six different translations of 
them. The Italian translation by Cesarotti is well 
known, and they have been excellently translated into 
Russ by Ermilius Ivanovitch Kostrow, the son of a 
Russian peasant. Dr. Johnson denied their authen- 
ticity, and, what was more provoking to their admirers, 
denied that they had any merit. But Johnson had 
strange notions about poetry, and used to say that the 
perusal of Milton's ■ Paradise Lost ' was a duty rather 
than a pleasure. He could not even appreciate the 
beauties of the Odes of Collins, which Southey thought 
the finest in our language. Blair had published a Dis- 
sertation, vindicating the authenticity of the Ossianic 
poems, and seriously ranking them with the productions 
of Homer and Virgil. Johnson did not know this ; 
and when he was asked in Blair's presence whether he 
thought that any man of a modern age could have 
written such poems, he said : " Yes, Sir, many men, 
many women, and many children." He said on another 
occasion that a man might write such stuff for ever, if 
he would abandon his mind to it. But the poetry 
which Byron loved, and which, even when translated 
into French, was the object of Napoleon's admiration, 
is more than rescued from contempt, and few, if any, 
will concur with the learned doctor in thinking it 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 7 

devoid of merit. Indeed, it possesses merit enough, 
and more than enough, to have procured for any author 
an enduring fame. It is far more easy to concur with 
Johnson in the spirit of that manly letter, in which he 
rebuked Macpherson as an impudent impostor. That 
letter I shall have the pleasure of reading presently at 
the conclusion of my remarks on the Ossianic poems. 

The art with which Macpherson strove to give the 
semblance of authenticity to his productions is well set 
forth by several of the authorities before referred to, 
and particularly in the article by Sir Walter Scott in 
the sixth volume of the ' Edinburgh Review.' Tradi- 
tions, names, and incidents occurring in the fragments 
of the popular ballad poetry of Scotland were inserted 
in the Ossianic poems, as Macpherson's taste or purpose 
might require. Hence it was that to the Highlander 
these poems called up images with which he had from 
childhood been familiar, and his early associations and 
national predilections were enlisted in favour of the 
fraud. Macpherson, too, by a dexterous anticipation, 
appropriated to Ossian the most classical places in 
Scotland, such as Carron, Glencoen or Cona, and 
Dumbarton, the Alcuith of Bede. The skill of the 
impostor was in these respects complete, and the 
delusion of the Highlander sincere. Some specimens 
of the Gaelic fragments, which were worked up by 
Macpherson into the so-called Ossian's Poems, are 



8 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

given by Sir Walter Scott in the article before referred 
to. The Highland Society took great pains in collect- 
ing as many of them as it was possible to obtain, but 
the committee of that society reported that they had 
not been able to obtain any one poem the same in title 
and in tenor with the poems published by Macpherson. 
The committee, after alluding to the changes made in 
those Gaelic fragments, declared themselves unable to 
determine to what extent Macpherson exercised those 
liberties. 

It is hardly necessary, at the present day, to enter 
at length upon the proofs which have established 
conclusively against Macpherson the forgery of the 
Ossianic poems. I must, however, refer briefly to 
some of the arguments adduced. 

In the first place, no very ancient Erse manuscripts, 
such as those in which Macpherson pretended to have 
discovered the originals of Ossian, ever have been, or 
ever will be produced, for this simple reason, that they 
do not exist. " No man," says Dr. Johnson, " has a 
credit upon his own word, when better evidence, if he 
had it, may be easily produced. But, so far as we can 
find, the Erse language was never written till very 
lately for the purposes of religion. A nation that 
cannot write, or a language that was never written, has 
no manuscripts."* He says further, in allusion to in- 
* Shaw, who was the author of a Gaelic Grammar and Die- 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 9 

quiries made during his Tour to the Hebrides, that 
" none of the old families had a single letter in Erse 
that he heard of." But the most conclusive evidence 
on this point is that of Mr. John Mackenzie, of the 
Temple, London, whom Macpherson by his will left 
sole trustee for the purpose of publishing the originals 
of Ossian. This gentleman, on being applied to by 
the Committee of the Highland Society for these 
originals, replied, that after a strict search no such 
books could be found; that the manuscripts left by 
Macpherson were not ancient, but in the handwriting of 
himself, or others whom he had employed to take down 
the poetry, or to copy it from the manuscripts with 
which he had been furnished. These facts may serve 
to show us how necessary it is, with reference to all 
historical matters, or republications of or translations 
from ancient documents, to ask the following simple 
questions. Where and in what state are the original 
manuscripts? In whose custody have they been pre- 
served ? If these questions cannot be answered satis- 

tionaiy, and who is spoken of in the first of the Prize Essays before 
referred to as " a sturdy moralist who loved truth better than Scot- 
land," writes as follows in pages 26 and 27 of his ' Enquiry into the 
Authenticity of the Poems ascribed to Ossian :" — " It is well known 
that the Erse dialect of the Gaelic was never written nor printed 
until Mr. MacFarlane, late minister of Killinvir, in Argylcshire, 
published in 1754 a translation of ' Baxter's Call to the . Uncon- 
verted.' " 

b3 



10 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

factorily, there is ground for something more than 
bare suspicion. 

No ancient manuscripts, then, of the Ossianic poems 
exist, and their traditional descent seems hardly within 
the limits of possibility. One cannot conceive, as it is 
well urged by Mr. Hume, that long and regular epic 
poems, composed as Macpherson said more than fifteen 
centuries since — poems too which have nothing in the 
shape of miracle or wonders, superstition or useful in- 
struction, to attract the people — should have been faith- 
fully handed down, by oral tradition, from father to son, 
through ages ignorant of letters, by the rudest perhaps 
of all the European nations — the most necessitous, the 
most turbulent, the most ferocious, and the most un- 
settled — a people ever harassed by the incursions of 
neighbouring tribes, or meditating revenge and re- 
taliation on their neighbours — a people, too, who 
during twelve centuries at least of the period referred 
to had no writing and no alphabet, and who even in 
the other three centuries made little use of their im- 
perfect alphabet for any purposes. 

The literary history of the world presents no example 
of so marvellous an occurrence. The Lapland and 
the Runic Odes, which have, as observed by Mr. Hume, 
a savage rudeness and sometimes grandeur, suited 
to the ages in which they were produced, are, he 
tells us, small in compass : and this, I may add, might 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 11 

be said with equal truth of the early poetry of the 
Arabs. 

Let us now glance for a moment at the chief internal 
evidences of imposture. The manners of the people 
as represented in these poems, and the chivalrous notions 
of the heroes, are inconsistent with everything which 
we have heard of as characteristic of remote and 
barbarous ages. Fingal carries his ideas of chivalry 
far beyond those of Amadis" de Gaul — immortalized 
by the ridicule which Cervantes has thrown on his 
exploits in ' Don Quixote'* — or of Lancelot de Lake, 
whose achievements in the sixth century contributed 
so largely to swell the fabulous renown of King Arthur 
and the Knights of his Round Table. Fingal, when 
his territory is invaded, disdains to repel the enemy 
with his whole force. He sends only an equal number 
against them under an inferior captain. When these 
are repelled he sends a second detachment, and it is 
not till after a double defeat that he deigns himself to 
descend from the hill and to attack the enemy. Fingal 
and Swaran combat each other all day with the 
greatest fury. When darkness suspends the battle, 
they feast together with the greatest amity, and then 



Lancelot of the Lake, a bright romance, 
That like a trumpet made young pulses dance, 
Yet had a softer note that shook still more." 

Leigh Hunt's 'Rimini; * Q. i?.' siv. 480. 



12 LITER AEY IMPOSTURES. 

renew the combat with the return of light. Are these, 
asks Mr. Hume, the manners of barbarous nations, or 
even of people that have common sense ? 

Internal evidence of Imposture is furnished also by 
the following circumstance. The Caledonians as well 
as the ancient Irish had no shipping, but carrachs, or 
wicker boats, covered with hides. • Yet they are repre- 
sented in the Ossianic poems as passing in great 
military expeditions from the Hebrides to Denmark, 
Norway, and Sweden. 

The great historian of the Roman empire has also 
directed attention to Macpherson's blunder with respect 
to Antoninus, whom he called Caracal or Caracalla, 
although he was not known by the latter name until 
after the period of which Macpherson speaks. 

I can of course only point to a few of the leading 
proofs by means of which Macpherson has been con- 
victed of Imposture. They are given in detail in the 
works which I have referred to, and are full of curiosity 
and interest. 

The impostures of Macpherson have been made to 
serve an end very different from that which their 
author had in view. By the spirit of inquiry and 
criticism which they awakened, they gave wings to the 
understanding, and spurred forward human intelli- 
gence in the vigorous pursuit of Truth. Historical 
truth, too, has been a gainer by the amount of attention 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 13 

which they fixed, not only on the early state, but also 
on the relative condition of Scotland and Ireland* 

I shall close my remarks upon the Ossianic forgeries 
by reading Johnson's letter, which I have before referred 
to. It is one of the finest specimens of laconic indig- 
nation, combined with fearless love of Truth, that 
ever issued from the pen of man. When accused by 
Dr. Johnson of imposture, Macpherson appears to have 
addressed to him a threatening letter, to which Johnson 
penned the following reply : — 

" Mr. James Macpherson, — I received your foolish 
and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall 
do my best to repel r and what I cannot do for myself 
the law shall do for me. I hope I never shall be 
deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the 
menaces of a ruffian. 

"What would you have me retract? I thought 
your book an imposture — I think it an imposture still. 
For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, 
which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. 
Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable ; 
and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay 
regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall 
prove. You may print this if you will. 

" Samuel Johnson." 

One hardly wonders after this that Goldsmith should 
have said : — " There is no arguing with Johnson, for, 



14 LITEEAEY IMPOSTUEES. 

if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the 
butt end of it." 

Let us now glance for a moment at the fate and 
fortunes of Chatterton, the marvellous Bristol boy. It 
is a sad, strange life to look at, full of contrasts wild 
and startling. How often in Mind's mysterious, inscru- 
table and subtle compound, as in the grosser picture- 
world of nature, do we find the brightest lights and 
darkest shadows in close proximity ! We see in 
Chatterton the highest gifts of intellect consecrated — 
desecrated, let me say — to the production of melodious 
lies, most tuneful falsehoods springing almost from 
inspiration; — sweet affection for mother, sister, kindred, 
unaccompanied by that higher sense of moral rectitude, 
that fascinating, fearless love of Truth, which we natu- 
rally expect to find in graceful union with tender 
feelings and with domestic virtues. But Chatterton' s 
was a hurried transit, — the meteor's or the comet's 
destiny. With him Life's day-dream was both begun 
and finished at a period when for others day has hardly 
dawned. He was a poor, proud, charity-school boy, 
beginning life with many disadvantages. He devoted 
his unquestionable powers to falsehoods literary and 
historical. He was at sixteen a poet of no ordinary 
pretensions ; he left his home, and the profession for 
which he had been intended, to seek his fortune in the 
literary world. Before eighteen he was sleeping in a 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 15 

pauper's grave, a suicide. With such a case I am 
most anxious to deal tenderly, but a lie is still a lie, 
whether told by man or boy. We may make allowances 
for the individual, but we dare not palliate the thing. 

In forming their moral judgment upon Chatterton, 
let those, on the one hand, who find in his extreme youth 
and early disadvantages an excuse for all delinquencies, 
remember the precocity of his genius. Let those, on 
the other hand 3 who can look only on the frauds of 
which he stands convicted, recall the circumstances of 
his early years — the discipline, to him most uncon- 
genial, first of a Bristol charity-school, and then of an 
attorney's office. Let them bear in mind that love for 
kindred, which his pride though obdurate could never 
stifle, — the self-denial which he practised, — the con- 
tinual privations which he endured, — his restless genius 
and his untimely end : — let them consider these things, 
and have the heart to judge at all events with forbear- 
ance, and in charity to hope the best. Possibly, if he 
had not closed abruptly his young career, he might 
have lived to offer at the shrine of Truth a tribute far 
more glorious than the homage which he had offered at 
the shrine of Falsehood, and have shared upon the 
throne of Genius the laurels which a Shakspeare won. 
The following sentiments which, in the ' Bristowe Tra- 
gedy,' he places in the mouth of Edward, who is look- 
ing on at Bawdin's death, show that he possessed a 



16 LITEEARY IMPOSTURES. 

high poetical appreciation of the majesty and power 
of Truth:— 

" Behold the man ! — he spake the Truth ; 
He 's greater than a King." 

What a picture of Truth's majesty and greatness ! 

And this too from a mere boy, the author of the Rowley 

forgeries ! 

The earliest forgery of Chatterton, very different in 

character from those by which it was succeeded, was 

the forgery of the Burgum pedigree. Burgum was a 

pewterer at Bristol — a weak, vain, ostentatious man, 

who, instead of being contented with that honourable 

reputation which an English tradesman cannot fail 

to win by integrity and straightforwardness in his 

dealings, wished, or was supposed to wish, to be 

thought a man of family. For this Burgum Chatterton 

forged a pedigree, which made the pewterer a lineal 

descendant of a proud and almost princely Norman. 

One cannot help smiling at the mock-heroic gravity of 

the commencement of this fictitious document : — 

" Simon de Seyncte Lyze, alias Senliz, married Matilda, 
daughter of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, North- 
ampton, and Huntingdon. He came into England with 
William the Conqueror, who, after the execution of 
Waltheof for high treason, created him Earl of North- 
ampton in the year of Christ MLXXV. : by deed by 
him granted it appears he was possessed of Burgham 
Castle in Northumberland." 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 17 

* 

Burgum, though ostentatious in his bearing, was not 
by any means ostentatious in giving. Five shillings 
were Chatterton's sole reward. Chatterton, however, 
dipped his pen in gall, and handed the pewterer down 
to posterity in the following lines, which occur in that 
strange document which he termed his will : — 

" Gods ! what would Burgum give to get a name, 
And snatch his blundering dialect from shame ! 
What would he give to hand his memory down 
To Time's remotest boundary? — a Crown. 
Would you ask more, his swelling face looks blue ; 
Futurity he rates at two pounds two. 
Well, Burgum, take thy laurel to thy brow ; 
With a rich saddle decorate a sow, 
Strut in iambics, totter in an ode, 
Promise and never pay — and be the mode." 

Yet Chatterton indulged a hope that the pewterer's 
gullibility and vanity might still be made to yield a 
more abundant harvest. A supplemental pedigree and 
a poem by one of Burgum's fictitious ancestors were 
afterwards palmed off on the weak and credulous man. 
" This John," says Chatterton, speaking, in the sup- 
plemental pedigree, of one of Burgum's imaginary 
forefathers, whom he represented as a monk of the 
Cistercian order, "was one of the greatest ornaments 
of the age in which he lived. He wrote several books, 
and translated part of the Iliad, under the title of 
' Romance of Troy.' " No wonder that the pewterer was 
flattered ! Whether or not he was more liberal on this 



18 LITEEARY IMPOSTURES. 

than on the previous occasion, I cannot say; but he 
was doomed, having sown in vanity, to reap in morti- 
fication. After Chatterton's death he went to Lon- 
don, to consult the heralds of March and Garter, and 
the result was that he returned to Bristol, and thought 
more of his pewtering than of his pedigree.* 

The next thing that Chatterton forged was an ac- 
count of the Mayor's first passing over the old bridge 
at Bristol. This was published in Felix Farley's 
' Bristol Journal,' on the occasion of the opening of the 
new bridge in 1768. On this occasion Chatterton's 
fertile brain supplied him with materials for the de- 
scription of an ancient imaginary civic pageant, with its 
goodly array of mayor, beadles, squires, and trappings, 
horses, and priests mendicant and secular. On reading 
it one cannot but exclaim with Johnson, " It is won- 
derful how the whelp has written such things." 

* In Pope's ' Essay on Man,' Ep. IV., pride of birth is made the 
subject of the following severe reflections :— 

" Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings, 

Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race, 

In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece : 

But by your fathers' worth if yours you rate, 

Count me those only who were good and great. 

Go ; if your ancient but ignoble blood 

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood, 

Go and pretend your family is young, 

Nor own your fathers have been fools so long. 

What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards ? 

Alas ! not all the blood of all the Howards." 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 19 

About this time Chatterton was introduced to Mr. 
Barrett, who was writing a history of Bristol. Chat- 
terton supplied him, not only with poems, but with 
what he called a true and particular account of the 
ancient churches of Bristol which had occupied the sites 
of the then existing structures. 

These forgeries, however remarkable as the produc- 
tions of a boy, are of an aspect much more dark than 
those by which they had been preceded. He had 
begun to falsify history for the purpose of getting 
money. 

And here I must take notice of a passage which 
with reference to Chatterton has been quoted from 
Carlyle. " The past," says Carlyle, " is all holy to 
us : the dead are all holy, even they that were base 
and wicked while alive. Their baseness and wicked- 
ness was not the?/, was but the heavy and unmanage- 
able environment that lay around them, with which 
they fought unprevailing ; they (the ethereal God-given 
force that dwelt in them was their self) have now 
shuffled off that heavy environment and are free and 
pure : their life-long battle, go how it might, is all 
ended, with many wounds or with fewer ; they have 
been recalled from it, and the once harsh jarring battle- 
field has become a silent awe-inspiring Golgotha and 
field of God." Such passages, by attempting to throw 
on circumstances the responsibility that attaches to 



20 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

individuals, tend to the setting up of a hopeless, lifeless 
fatalism, destructive of the boundaries between right 
and wrong — dangerous to the individual man, to so- 
ciety, and to the state itself. Against the views which 
they promulgate, come they from Carlyle, or come they 
from whom they may, you will, I feel sure, join with me 
in entering a protest energetic and unequivocal. 

The next important occurrence in the history of 
Chatterton is the forgery of the Rowley Poems. Some 
of these were offered to Dodsley, the well-known pub- 
lisher, in a letter written by Chatterton in 1768. This 
epistle contained the offer of certain poems and of an 
interlude, " probably," said Chatterton, " the oldest 
dramatical piece extant, wrote by one Rowley, a priest 
in Bristol, who lived in the reigns of Henry VI. and 
Edward IV." No answer was returned, but Chatterton, 
nothing daunted, in less than two months wrote again. 
He disclaimed in his second letter all mercenary mo- 
tives, and added that, if able, he would print the 
tragedy at his own risk. " His motive," he said, " was 
to convince the world that the monks, of whom some 
have so despicable an opinion, were not such block- 
heads as generally thought, and that good poetry 
might be wrote in the dark days of superstition as well 
as in these more enlightened ages." His second appli- 
cation was as unsuccessful as the first ; and he next 
tried, but with an equal want of success, to obtain the 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 21 

patronage of Horace Walpole, to whom lie successively 
transmitted ' Rowley's Rise of Painting in England,' 
and his ' History of Painters in England, with anec- 
dotes and specimens of poetry by Rowley and others.' 
The poems Walpole showed to his friends Mason and 
Gray, who at once pronounced them forgeries, and de- 
clared there was no symptom in them of their being 
the productions of near so distant an age, and recom- 
mended the returning them without any further notice. 
Walpole, however, who had written courteously in 
reply to Chatterton's first communication, wrote to 
Chatterton, and told him that he had communicated 
his manuscripts to much better judges, and that they 
were by no means satisfied with their authenticity. 
Walpole seems, from his own statement, for his actual 
letter was probably destroyed by Chatterton, to have 
given the latter some very sound and wholesome advice. 
But the doubts thrown out by Walpole only served to 
make Chatterton more positive in asserting the authen- 
ticity of the poems. In his letter demanding that the 
manuscripts should be returned, he used language 
which Walpole terms singularly impertinent, but 
which Mr. Southey calls dignified and spirited. That 
Walpole was not justified in retaining Chatterton's 
manuscripts for so long a period as he did retain them, 
all must admit ; and if Chatterton had had truth and 
innocence on his side, the encomium of Dr. Southey 



22 LITERACY IMPOSTURES. 

would have been well merited. But we ought to bear 
in mind that Chatterton addressed a person on whom 
he had endeavoured to impose, and whom he had 
wearied by his importunities. Dr. Southey's literary 
zeal, and his generous admiration for ill-fated genius, 
appear to me on this occasion to have got the better 
of his judgment. In cases of misfortune, as Campbell 
observes, the first consolation to which human nature 
resorts is, right or wrong, to find somebody to blame, 
and an evil seems to be half cured when it is traced 
to an object of indignation. 

When Chatterton was questioned as to the source 
from which he derived the originals of the Rowley 
Poems no satisfactory or definite answer could be 
elicited. The uncle of Chatterton's father was for 
many years a sexton in the church of St. Mary of 
Redcliff, rebuilt in the reign of Edward the Fourth by 
Mr. Canynge, an opulent merchant of Bristol. About 
the year 1727 the muniment chests of the church had 
been broken open by leave and with the licence of 
the constituted authorities. Some ancient deeds had 
been taken out, and the remaining manuscripts left 
exposed as of no value. Chatterton's father, the 
nephew of the sexton, carried off great numbers of the 
parchments to make covers for the writing books of 
his scholars. Chatterton gave out that amongst the 
residue of his father's parchments he had found many 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 23 

writings of a Mr. Canynge, and of his friend Thomas 
Rowley, a priest of the fifteenth century, and he pre- 
tended that a portion of these manuscripts were the 
originals of the Rowley Poems. These, as he asserted, 
he transcribed, and some of them he sold to a Mr. 
Catcott and a Mr. Barrett, the former a merchant, the 
latter a surgeon, of Rristol. The poems sold were 
for the most part transcripts; what few parchments 
there were have since been deposited in the British 
Museum. When these poems, in process of time, 
were published, a long literary controversy ensued, on 
the history of which 1 will not enter, but I may men- 
tion that Dr. Milles, the Dean of Exeter and President 
of the Antiquarian Society, was a strenuous supporter 
of the authenticity of the poems, and published them 
in a royal quarto edition, with notes and dissertations. 
The good Dean made one most unlucky hit, for in 
speaking of the poem entitled the ' Bristowe Tragedy, 
or the Death of Sir C. Bawdin,' he affirms that a 
greater variety of internal proofs may be produced for 
its authenticity than for that of any other piece in the 
whole collection. It appears, however, from a letter 
written by Chatterton's sister, and first published in 
Southey's edition of his works in 1803, that Chatterton 
privately acknowledged to his mother that he was the 
author of this poem. Those who wish to examine the 
subject should read upon the one hand Bryant's work 



24 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

in favour of the authenticity of the poems, and on 
the other the vigorous and acute reasoning of Mr. 
Malone, who maintained that the poems were the works 
of Chatterton. They should read also the twenty- 
sixth section of the ' History of English Poetry,' by 
War ton. 

Let me shortly call your attention to some of the 
means by which Chatterton has been convicted of im- 
posture. 

Strong proofs of fraud arose from the state of the 
pretended original manuscripts, some of which were 
bequeathed by Dr. Glynne Clobery to the British 
Museum at the commencement of the present century. 
When these pretended originals were examined, it 
appeared that the parchment on which they were 
written was old, but, that it might look still older, it 
had been stained on the outside with ochre, which was 
easily rubbed off with a linen cloth. The form of the 
letters, though artfully contrived to wear an antiquated 
appearance, differed very essentially from every one 
of our early alphabets. Nor were the characters uni- 
form or consistent, some of the letters being shaped 
according to the present round hand, others according 
to the ancient court and text hands. Care had 
also been evidently taken to tincture the ink with a 
yellow cast. I may here observe that this process of 
staining the paper with ochre, and giving a yellow 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 25 

tinge to the ink is commonly resorted to by literary 
impostors, though a close examination soon enables a 
practised eye to detect the trick. I have laid upon the 
table one of the Byronic forgeries recently mentioned 
in the ' Athenaeum ' and in the ' Times.' In this 
volume the paper and the ink, though the fraud is 
hardly perceptible by candlelight, have, I have no 
doubt, been similarly operated on. To communicate a 
stronger stamp of rude antiquity the Ode was written 
like prose ; no distinction or termination being made 
between the several verses. 

The internal evidences of imposture are not less 
conclusive against Chatterton. 

The poet occasionally forgets his assumed character, 
and the diction is sometimes antiquated and sometimes 
modern. In the ' Battle of Hastings ' too, one of the 
Rowley Poems, said to be translated from the Saxon, 
Stonehenge is called a Druidical temple. But the 
established and uniform opinion of the Welsh and 
Armorican bards was, that it was erected in memory 
of four hundred and sixty Britons who were massacred 
by Hengist, the Saxon, in the fifth century, and this 
was the prevailing opinion during the period in which 
the battle of Hastings was fought. My subject is 
Literary Impostures, and not Stonehenge, but I may 
mention that the opinion referred to was that adopted 
by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote a History of the 



26 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

Britons in Latin in Stephen's reign. He tells us that 
Stonehenge was erected by the counsel of Merlin, the 
British enchanter, at the command of Aurelius Am- 
brosius, the last British king, in memory of Hengist's 
victims. That the Druids constructed this stupendous 
pile for a place of worship was a discovery reserved for 
the sagacity of a wiser age, and the laborious discus- 
sion of modern antiquaries, among whom Dr. Stukeley 
deserves especial mention. Other internal evidences 
of fabrication in the Rowley Poems might be adduced, 
but, as my time is short, an allusion to these circum- 
stances, and to the anachronism into which Chatterton 
fell with reference to the origin of Stonehenge, will I 
hope suffice. 

Chatterton, with all his genius, could not lie success- 
fully, or sustain an assumed character so as to escape 
detection. Wanting truth, he wanted the one thing 
needful. His history is sad — its close terrible — the 
moral striking. But his attempted imposition, like the 
forgery of Macpherson, has largely served the cause of 
general intelligence and advanced the interests of Truth. 
It has contributed, by the controversy it provoked and 
the talent which it called forth, to quicken critical 
acumen, and to multiply the means by which literary 
fraud and artifice may be detected and held up to the 
odium which they deserve. Both impostures have 
brought out, in bold relief, this wholesome fact, that, 



LITERAKY IMPOSTUEES. 27 

although the simplest man who takes his stand on Truth 
may occupy a position from which the cleverest cannot 
drive him, the man of genius who takes his stand on 
Falsehood cannot finally escape from the exposure and 
the contempt which fraud deserves. 

I come next to the forgeries before alluded to of the 
Abbe Vella.* They were, perhaps, with reference to 
the interests they attacked, the boldest of all literary 
impostures. Five volumes of Vella's forgeries I have 
laid upon the table. In the present day it is not easy 
to procure them, as the Sicilian nobles, for reasons 
which I shall mention presently, destroyed everything 
which they could find connected with the history of 
these impostures. The facts are curious, and, as far 
as I can learn, no full account of them has ever yet 
been published in England. 

In the year 1782 Moohammad Ibn Oothman, am- 
bassador of Morocco at the court of Naples, took an 
opportunity, while at Palermo, of visiting the abbey of 
St. Martin near that city. He was attended by Joseph 
Vella, a Maltese, chaplain of a religious order, and 
also, at a subsequent period, Abbe of St. Pancrace in 
Sicily. The Maltese is a corrupt dialect of the Arabic, f 

* For my account of these very remarkable forgeries I am chiefly 
indebted to an able article by S. de Sacy in the ' Magasiu Encyclo- 
pedique,' 5 6me Annee, tome vi. p. 330. 

t McCulloch speaks of it as a patois of Arabic mixed with 
Italian. 

c2 



28 LITEEAE5T IMPOSTURES. 

and, as it was Vella's native language, it enabled him 
to serve as interpreter and guide to the ambassador 
during the period of his stay. The Arabic manu- 
scripts belonging to the abbey were shown to the 
ambassador on the occasion of his visit. This circum- 
stance, says M. Hager, a learned and enthusiastic 
German, whose literary zeal and love of Truth induced 
him to go to Sicily to make inquiries with reference to 
one of Vella's pretended discoveries, suggested the 
idea of the literary imposture of which I am at present 
speaking. Vella had heard from D. Louis Moncada, 
a Sicilian gentleman, that for some time past persons 
had been anxious for, and had hoped to find, materials 
in the Arabian writers for filling up a gap of nearly 
two centuries in the history of Sicily in the middle 
ages. He took the hint, and published the statement, 
when the ambassador had departed, that this African 
had found, in the library of the abbey, a manuscript 
containing the Diplomatic Code or correspondence be- 
tween the Arabian governors of Sicily and their masters 
the sovereigns of Africa, relating to the above-named 
period. Four quarto volumes of this work are in my 
possession. Vella next pretended that he had cor- 
responded with the ambassador after his return to 
Morocco, and had learned that there existed in the 
library at Fez a duplicate of the Diplomatic Code longer 
than that in the abbey of St. Martin ; that another 






LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 29 

work had been discovered, forming a continuation of 
the Diplomatic Code, relating to the period of the 
Norman occupation of Sicily, together with a series of 
coins, confirming the historical statements which that 
code contained. 

The imposture for the time was most successful. 
Airoldi, Archbishop of Heraclea, appeared willing to 
incur any expense which the publication of the work 
required. The King of Naples, to whom Vella pre- 
sented a copy in manuscript of the Diplomatic Code, 
ordered that he, together with three pupils, should be 
sent at the expense of the crown to Morocco, provided 
with funds which might enable him to procure, from 
the libraries existing in that country, all the Arabian 
manuscripts which might in any way contribute to 
throw light on the history of Sicily. This project, 
however, was never put into execution. 

The first volume of the Diplomatic or Martinian 
Code was published in 1789, under the auspices of 
Airoldi, and the second volume appeared in 1792. 
The first was dedicated to the king, and the second to 
the queen, of Naples. 

Airoldi had even come to the resolution of having 
the pretended Arabian text printed, and for this pur- 
pose he obtained types of Arabian characters from 
Bodoni. An artist named Di Bella was employed to 
engrave the coins of the emirs, the inscriptions, the 



30 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

first page of the manuscript, and certain papal letters, 
which will be mentioned presently. 

As the pretended original of this work was a manu- 
script which did not contain one syllable relating to 
Sicily, but consisted entirely of traditions relating to 
Abdallah the father of Mahomet, Amina his mother, 
Abdool Mootalib his grandfather, Hisham his great 
grandfather, Abootalib his uncle, and the family of 
the Kooraish, Vella set to work to disfigure it in such 
a manner as to render detection difficult if not impossi- 
ble. To this task he devoted several weeks, disfiguring 
it page by page and word by word. He introduced 
some vowel points, and corrupted the text in such a 
manner as to render it a matter of no small difficulty 
to ascertain the true sense of the original. As he 
feared, however, that practised eyes might discover the 
freshness of the ink in the interpolations of the manu- 
script, or of the red-lead in the titles of the para- 
graphs, he caused leaves of gold-beater's skin to be fixed 
on every page by means of a sort of glutinous glaze, in 
order to secure, as he pretended, the manuscript against 
the injuries of time. This was done at considerable 
expense, which fell on the unhappy monks of St. Martin, 
to whom the manuscript belonged. The manuscript 
itself had come into the hands of this abbey in 1744, 
and had previously belonged to D. Martino la Farino, 
Marquis of Madonia, who had brought it with him on 



LITEEAEY IMPOSTURES. 31 

his return from the Escurial to Palermo, which was his 
native town. 

When any one who understood Arabic presented 
himself, Vella refused to allow the manuscript to be 
inspected. His insolence increased to such a point, 
that he even refused to restore it to its proprietors, 
notwithstanding the urgent solicitations of Padre Drago, 
the librarian of the abbey. 

The work was received and quoted as an authentic 
historical document by several writers of good cha- 
racter. There were, however, many men of learning 
who from the first denied the authenticity of the works 
in question. Among them were M. Marini, a keeper 
of the papal archives, who declared that the papal 
letters before alluded to were supposititious, and also, 
I am happy to say for the credit of one of our leading 
universities, the professor of Arabic at Oxford. The 
latter gentleman, on receiving the first portion of the 
work, condemned it at once by writing upon it the most 
laconic of criticisms, " good for nothing/' 

Vella pretended to have discovered, from a letter 
contained in the manuscript in question, that the emir 
or prince, the father of the Arabian princess Aziza, 
who has given the name to a Saracenic chateau in the 
environs of Palermo, was interred in the mosque of 
that chateau. Permission was asked to excavate, a 
skeleton was found, and Vella, appealing triumphantly 



32 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

to the fact, declared that the exact place was indicated 
in the manuscript, which however did not contain one 
syllable on the subject. 

Vella's ignorance and impudence soon involved him 
in a variety of very whimsical blunders. On one 
occasion, when consulted respecting a small Turkish 
manuscript, he replied that it contained the history of 
Sicily. This manuscript, when examined by M. Calleja, 
professor of Arabic at Malta, proved to be nothing 
more than a collection of prayers in the Turkish 
language. 

The publication of the Diplomatic Code was fol- 
lowed up in 1793 by the publication of the first volume 
of ' The Book of the Council in Egypt/ known also as 
the Norman Code. Two editions were published at 
the same time at the expense of the king, The prin- 
cipal edition was in folio, and contained the pretended 
Arabic text with a translation. It was printed with 
great magnificence from Bodoni's types, and adorned 
with plates which represented the remains of ancient 
Arabian edifices at Palermo. Vella affirmed that the 
original Arabic manuscript had come from the library 
at Fez, and, that circumstantiality might not be want- 
ing to the plausibility of his falsehood, added that it 
had been sent to him from Morocco by way of Leghorn. 
The work professes to contain the correspondence 
between the Norman princes Count Roger and Duke 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES, 33 

Robert Guiscardi, and Al - Moostanser Billah, the 
eighth in succession of the Fatimite khalifs who reigned 
in Egypt, and the fifth in succession from Al-Mooazz, 
who had established the dominion of this dynasty in that 
country. The Code consists of two parts. The first, 
in ninety-three chapters, contains the early legislation 
of the two Norman princes. The second contains three 
hundred and fifteen chapters of laws which were alleged 
to have been published at Messina by Count Robert. 

This latter forgery was perhaps the boldest that 
was ever heard of. The Code propounded new and 
important maxims with reference to the absolute rights 
of the sovereign, to his exclusive ecclesiastical patronage, 
as well as his right to elect bishops, and to causes 
affecting the lands of the crown. It professed to deal 
also with the question of the sovereignty of Benevento 
and other similar disputes. The whole of Sicily was in 
an uproar. So great was the alarm among the nobles, 
(who have since endeavoured, as I stated, to destroy all 
vestiges of the fraud,) that the viceroy of Sicily thought 
it expedient, in 1794, to assure the States- General that 
the king, not wishing to abuse the rights which this 
Code appeared to confer on him, had intrusted to a lite- 
rary German the task of examining carefully the work 
in question and its claims to authenticity. 

The German edition of M. Hager's pamphlet does 
not mention the latter circumstance, but states that a 

c3 



34 LITERARY IMPOSTURES, 

proposition was made in the last parliament of 1794, 
to demand of the king that the Norman Code might 
not be cited as an authority in the tribunals of the 
kingdom, until an ordinance of the king had formally 
declared it authentic. It is also stated that D. Ciccio 
Carelli, secretary of the government, who was sus- 
pected of being the author of this political romance, 
endeavoured to prevent effect being given to this pro- 
position. 

It was just about the time when the contention was 
at its height that M. Hager arrived in Sicily, for the 
purpose of verifying the fact, which had been mentioned 
in the European journals, that Vella possessed an 
Arabic version of the missing books of Livy. Vella 
showed M. Hager his collection of Saracenic vases 
found in Sicily, a variety of Arabian manuscripts, and 
his Cufic medals or coins, thirteen hundred of which 
were of gold. 

These coins turned out afterwards to be of no more 
historical value than his manuscripts and pretended 
historical documents. Unlike all the genuine Arabic 
coins, they were, for the most part, not struck, but cast 
in moulds, as was proved by the engraver to the Mint 
at Palermo. The inscriptions, too, were at variance 
with the inscriptions on contemporary coins which were 
unquestionably genuine. I have not been able in any 
of the works, French, German, or English, which I 



LITERAEY IMPOSTURES. 35 

have consulted respecting Vella, to find anything that 
throws light on the manner in which he managed to 
forge such a series of gold coins, but I hope to do so 
at some future day. 

Of the manuscript translation of the missing books 
of Livy he always avoided the production, and, at 
length, when pressed by M. Hager, produced an ex- 
tract of the sixtieth book in Italian. M. Hager, on 
comparing this extract with the Epitome of Florus, 
which Airoldi had brought him, perceived that it was 
only a literal translation of the Epitome; and the 
canon Gregorio, who had been the first to attack the 
authenticity of the Martinian Code, now directed M. 
Hager's attention to the chronology, the style, and the 
inconsistencies of this Code. The latter was so struck 
with them, that he declared to the Viceroy that this 
work appeared to him to be a manifest imposition, — a 
declaration which he renewed on his arrival at Naples, 
in a memoir addressed to the king, which was trans- 
mitted to General Acton. M. Hager was invited to 
return to Sicily to examine the Martinian and Norman 
Codes. He did so, and remained there from 1794 
until the end of 1796, but did not at that time publish 
the results of his inquiries, as the king said in a de- 
spatch, dated the 22nd' of August, 1797, that he would 
publish them in due time.*' 

* See Note (A), page 46. 



36 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

Adami, Bishop of Aleppo, an Arab by birth, having 
been invited by the King of Naples to visit Palermo on 
his return to his country in 1796, examined the two 
codes, and confirmed entirely the judgment of M. 
Hager. The result was, that the second volume of the 
Norman Code,* the printing of which had not at that 
time been finished, was sent away to be converted into 
pasteboard. Vella was condemned to fifteen years' 
imprisonment, and to reimburse the treasury for the 
expense of printing the first volume of the Norman 
Code. His judge was Monsignor Airoldi, who had 
been his patron and the dupe of his imposture. He 
was, doubtless, the last man in Europe who ought to 
have been selected to sit as judge on such an occasion.t 
The decree, which is in Latin, seems to admit that 
Vella, in putting together the codes in question, derived 
much of what he wrote from Arabic sources, though he 
mixed up extraneous matter in a very unskilful way. 

Vella died I know not where, and care not how, 
except that I hope he died repentant. 

He was a most indefatigable scoundrel, and one in 
whose favour not a syllable can be said. Like Mac- 
pherson and Chatterton, he had great abilities; but 
clever as he was, he was not clever enough to lie con- 
sistently, and, fortunately for the cause of Truth, few 

* See Note (B), page 49. 
.+ See Note (C), page 49. 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES, 37 

are ever found to be so. The man's whole literary life 
was one huge literary lie. Having followed him, not 
to the gallows but to the dungeon, I must leave him to 
fare in it as best he may. I have not time, nor have I 
inclination, to trace his imprisonment to its close by 
death, if so it closed, or to exhihit him again in the 
character of a rogue at large. On his punishment I 
shall make but one remark. The gate of the prison, 
when it has closed on genius, has sometimes, as in the 
case of Grotius, been said to be the porch of fame, but 
it is only the screen which law and decency require 
when it keeps a clever rascal out of sight. 

I could have wished, had time permitted it, to place 
before you the history of other frauds. The forgery 
by Ireland of the Shakspeare papers, and of the tragedy 
of ' Vortigern and Rowena,' would furnish of itself 
materials for a lecture. The forgeries by which 
Lauder endeavoured to rob Milton of his well-earned 
fame belong in point of time to the same century. 
The attempt recoiled upon its author, who was forced to 
a most humiliating confession of his guilt ; and, having 
sown in falsehood, was doomed to reap in shame. 

The forgeries of Psalmanazar are of a somewhat 
earlier period, and they suggest more melancholy 
reflections, because they were the fruits of genius the 
most undoubted, and learning the most varied and 
profound. This author, when he arrived in England, 



38 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

passed himself off as a Formc-san.* His translation of 
the Church Catechism into the pretended Formosan 
language — a language which he had himself invented 
— was favourably received by Compton, then Bishop of 
London. The learned examined it ; they found it 
regular and grammatical, and gave it as their opinion 
that it was a real language and no counterfeit. This 
effort was soon followed by the publication of his well- 
known ' History of the Island of Formosa/ in which he 
said that he had been born. This history was in fact 
no history, but the creation of his comprehensive brain. 
The deception, however, was complete, the book passed 
through a number of editions, and was translated into 
divers languages. " Great," says Disraeli, " must 
have been that erudition which could form a pretended 
language and its grammar, and fertile the genius 
which could invent the history of an unknown people." 
But Disraeli does not mention the most remarkable 
fact connected with this extraordinary personage. Not 
only are the language and history of Formosa impos- 
tures, but the name of the author is an assumed one, 
an imposture likewise. Though he lived long in 
England — quite long enough to repent his falsehood 
and the errors of his youth ; though he embarked, as 
in the case of his contributions to the * Universal His- 
tory,' on many conscientious and useful undertakings 
* See Note (D), page 51. 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 39 

under the assumed name of George Psalmanazar, his 
real name never has been, and probably never will be 
discovered. 

His history conveys its moral : from a sense of 
shame and of respect towards his family, he refused to 
associate with an honourable name the errors and 
excesses of his youth. His contrition seems to have 
been sincere, and the conversation of his latter days 
had attractions for the good and learned. Johnson, 
who boasted that "he never sought much after any- 
body," says : " I sought after George Psalmanazar 
most. I used to go and sit with him at an alehouse 
in the city ; " — an alehouse being in those days a sort 
of literary rendezvous. Johnson reverenced his piety, 
and, as for contradicting him, once said that he should 
as soon have thought of contradicting a bishop. 

It is time to close the catalogue — and would that I 
could say I had exhausted it — of literary frauds. As 
though the list were to be prolonged indefinitely, im- 
postures, already mentioned, have recently been made 
known in the columns of the literary and leading 
journals of the day, which, though inferior in talent and 
ingenuity, may perhaps rival in infamy some of the 
frauds before alluded to. As the facts on which a judg- 
ment must be pronounced are only partially before the 
public, I must content myself with saying that I refer 
to the Byron, Keats, and Shelley forgeries. You will 



40 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

have seen that, so far as I have traced the history of 
literary frauds, Truth has triumphed in the end, and 
that the moral lesson is complete. I doubt not that 
these new impostures will, like them, exhibit Truth 
finally triumphant, and bring down infamy on their 
degraded authors. 

But it is not only in the literary world that Falsehood 
has been set up as an antagonist to Truth. Within the 
spheres of political and religious life it has hurried 
on a deadly contest. Our glorious Reformation was 
chiefly, and in effect, an assertion of the rights of 
Reason, and a protest of indignant Truth against 
Falsehood's artifice and daring. 

The struggle between Truth and Falsehood is not 
ended. It has convulsed, and may convulse again, the 
political and the religious world. 

It were well if England, on all legitimate occasions, 
would assert and vindicate for herself and Europe the 
right and paramount duty of that free inquiry in 
political and religious matters which I have through- 
out this lecture traced in its application to the detection 
of literary fraud. It were well if she would, by some 
well-weighed and comprehensive scheme of unsectarian 
education, endeavour, within the limits of her own 
dominions, to teach her children how to inquire. I say, 
especially unsectarian ; for why should Truth, and more 
especially Religious Truth, be prejudiced by education ? 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 41 

There are few parts of Europe in which, though 
Truth no doubt has language, its utterance is not sup- 
pressed. It may be, that in Anglo-Saxon hearts, 
Anglo-Saxon principles, and Anglo-Saxon institutions, 
Truth shall find her only refuge, and Liberty her latest 
home. 

To Truth my subject more especially confines me ; 
and let not the friends of Truth despair. Mind's best 
birthright Mind shall yet maintain inviolate, and 
Truth shall vindicate her own. Truth is not extin- 
guished because its utterance is suppressed. The 
wreath of smoke may veil the flame from view, and yet 
the fire be burning on in all its strength and coming 
brightness. The river may be frozen over and seem 
to stagnate, while the volume of its crystal waters rolls 
on in power and purity below. Yes ; and it is even 
thus with Truth. The very impostures to which I 
have alluded have been made to battle in her righteous 
cause. They have called forth intelligence which else 
had lain concealed, like the statue in the block of 
marble. The machinery by which fraud may be laid 
bare has rivalled in its progress towards completeness 
the march of our material civilization. Lies have 
come back home, and brought shame with them, to 
perverted genius. Truth, despite the twistings of the 
intellectual juggler, has triumphed in the literary world. 
Ay, and Truth shall compass nobler triumphs still. 



42 LITEEAEY IMPOSTURES. 

Intelligence is widely spreading. Libraries and facili- 
ties for reference are increasing ; and, in exact propor- 
tion to their increase, will success in literary, historical, 
and religious frauds, become from day to day more 
hopeless. This very Institution, the very room in which 
I speak, is a workshop to forge weapons for Intelligence, 
and a bastion for the defence of Truth. I am sure 
that, even now, I am addressing many eager to become 
her champions. Impostors, at last, have forced man- 
kind to see that the surest and simplest road to Truth 
is to employ research, and to judge fearlessly, inde- 
pendently, and for themselves. Critics too increase in 
number and in competency ; and critics, give me leave 
to say, are Truth's policemen. The light of their intel- 
lectual lanterns flashes somewhat awkwardly on False- 
hood. 

The voice of the people has been called the voice of 
God. Should we not say rather, the voice of Truth is 
the voice of God? When the people, or when nations 
speak the Truth, God is with them, and they prevail. 

But it may be said, is Truth then, as regards the 
past, so very desirable that we should seek it at the 
sacrifice of bright illusions by which our fond enthu- 
siasm has been called forth, and in which imagination 
has found delight ? Yes ; for past falsehoods taint the 
onward stream of thought. Errors again to some may 
yield a hectic and a sickly pleasure, but Truth, and 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 43 

the detection of artifice and fraud, must yield to 
healthy minds a more abiding bliss. It is more manly 
to wake up boldly in the bracing atmosphere of reality, 
and look Truth fairly in the face, than to slumber on 
for ever in the Paradise of fools. 

A love of Truth becomes, I need not say how largely, 
an element of public spirit — that spirit which leads 
men to look into their own minds, to examine their 
own hearts, and to carry out in public life the princi- 
ples which they find engraven there, not as a means of 
promoting mere self-interest, not as a means of seeking 
favour with the great and powerful, but because in 
their consciences they believe that those principles are 
just and true, and conducive to their country's good. 

A love of Truth, moreover, a fearless earnest search 
for it, must lead men to a knowledge of the difficulties 
by which the pursuit of it has ever been beset. Tjhat 
knowledge suggests, or ought to suggest, a large and en- 
lightened spirit of toleration in dealing with the opinions 
of our fellow men, even when we conceive that those 
opinions are based on error. Intolerant we should be, 
but of Intolerance alone. 

So much has been said this evening on the subject 
of Truth and Imposture, that you will perhaps expect 
me, in conclusion, to attempt to give some answer to 
the great question, " What is Truth ? " Truth, said 
Plato, is God's substance, and light his shadow ! If 



44 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

asked more concerning it, without attempting to define 
that which is by nature infinite, I answer, it is the no- 
blest and most sublime reality of mind and life. What 
is Falsehood ? Life's most perilous illusion. " A lie," 
says Bacon, quoting Montaigne,* " faces God and 
shrinks from man." We may liken Falsehood to the 
ignis-fatuus of the morass, which glitters only to betray. 
We may liken Truth to the sun which shines in 
heaven, the source of light, and life, and health, and 
beauty. Alone, Truth does not make men great, but 
no man can be great without it, and, like virtue, to be 
loved it needs but to be seen. It travels through the 
course of History upon a pathway which Omnipotence 
has traced. Tyrants seek to trample it under foot, but 
it survives to perpetuate their shame. Falsehood pays 
it homage, for it assumes its stamp and guise, that its 
worthless counterfeits may pass with men as current 
coin. Its voice is one which all nations understand, 
though it sometimes seems to die away among them, 
or lingers but in echoes, faint, feeble, and inarticulate. 
Still Truth never dies. Truth cannot die. It exists 
through an eternity of being —it smiles upon the 
wrecks of time. The obstacles which Truth encounters, 
the clouds which dim its progress, shall but enhance 
its lustre, when it shall stand at length supreme. It 
gives to poetry its noblest aspirations, to literature 
* Montaigne's Essays, book 2, c. 18, p. 421. 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 45 

vitality, and dignity to man. Its purest dwelling is 
the bosom of the Most High, its earthly triumph the 
heritage which Mind must win. But Mind has limits : 
the maximum of knowledge — the maximum of truth, 
which it can in this world make its own, are but as a 
drop of water in the ocean, compared with the compre- 
hensiveness of that Truth which has existed from all 
eternity in the mind of the Supreme Being. 

Give me leave, at parting from you, to thank you for 
your kind attention, and to conclude with the expres- 
sion of one heartfelt wish. In all your literary efforts, 
in all you think, write, do, or say, may you earnestly 
and fearlessly follow Truth, and make, by God's 
blessing, Truth your own. 



NOTES. 



Note (A) to page 35. — Diplomatic or Martinian Code. 

The following is a summary of the proofs, as given by 
M. Hager, which negative the authenticity of the Diplo- 
matic or Martinian Code : — 

The manuscript which Yella pretended was the ori- 
ginal of the Code is not, as he stated, in Cufic, nor even 
in African characters, but in the Neshki character, which 
is used by the Arabs of Turkey and of Egypt. 

The Mahometan months are lunar, but Yella, in three 
instances, introduces the names of Syrian months, which 
are solar — Adar, Ailool, and Kanoon Ath-thani. An- 
other month is called Aoozah (it should have been at all 
events Aoost), after the faulty text of the Cambridge 
Chronicle, published by Carusius. 

The names of seven months are Arabian names of 
lunar months, most of them incorrectly written ; and 
there are other equally absurd mistakes. 

Carusius had noted in the margin of the Cambridge 
Chronicle the solar months of the Latins, which corre- 
sponded in the years of which he spoke with the lunar 
months of the Mahometans. Yella, forgetting that this 
correspondence is continually changing, made it the 
same throughout his work. 

He was also betrayed into an anachronism in calling 
Constantinople, Stamboul. In the article by De Sacy 



LITERAEY IMPOSTURES. 47 

this mistake is referred to, but not explained by any 
reference to the dates at which the respective names 
were applied. 

When he speaks of money, instead of the Arabian 
words Dinar and Dirhem, we find the Turkish words 
Zermabool and Groosch, the last of which is borrowed 
from the German. 

In matters of chronology, too, he made great blun- 
ders. The succession of the emirs of Sicily and the 
sovereigns of Africa, with the dates of their accession 
and their deaths, are continually at variance with Noo- 
wairi and Aboolfeda, but follow exactly the Sicilian 
authors Inveges and Carusius. The dates, too, of 
Vella's coins are adapted to the chronology of Inveges 
and Carusius. 

The African kings are called Moolai. This title is 
said to be altogether unknown in the earlier Arabic 
historians. " I believe," says De Sacy, " that the title 
is modern, and cannot be carried further back than the 
commencement of the present dynasty of the kings of 
Morocco." 

Instead of calling themselves Mooslimoon, Musulmans, 
or Moominoon, true believers ; and the Christians Moosh- 
rikoon, polytheists, or people who associate others with 
God ; Kooffaroon, infidels ; Nassaroon, Christians ; the 
Mahometans, in speaking of themselves, are made to say : 
" Our people, our nation ; " and they call the Sicilians 
" The hostile nation, the Sicilian nation." 

In speaking of dates too, Vella refers to the year of 
Mahomet, instead of referring, as is the practice with 
Arabian writers, to the era of the flight. 



48 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

Instead of the Arabian formulary, " In the name of 
God the Merciful, the Giver of Mercy," Vella employs 
the following : "In the name of God and Mahomet." 
He makes mention of Mahomet, too, without adding, 
after the fashion of Arabian writers, " May God's blessing 
rest upon him, and peace." 

As regards the authenticity of the Papal letters before 
referred to, it may be observed that Yella makes men- 
tion of Papa Morinu; but in the ninth century the 
bishops of Eome did not style themselves Papa, but 
Episcopus only. The Papal letters, moreover, are not to 
be found in the pretended manuscript ; nor did the Popes, 
although they wrote, it is true, in corrupt Latin, make 
use of such a patois as that which is found in the Mar- 
tinian Code. 

Vella exhibited six leaves of Supplement to the Mar- 
tinian Code, alleging that he had been robbed of the 
remainder. The paper was of the manufacture of the 
Fabiani at Genoa, and was such as was at that time pur- 
chased of the stationers at Palermo ; the writing is 
throughout that of a hand unaccustomed to write Arabic ; 
the characters are not African but Asiatic ; the style 
and the construction of the sentences are Italian, the 
ideas European. 

In the Catalogue of the Books in the Library of the 
House of Commons the ' Codice Diplomatico ' is referred 
to, under the head of ' Airoldi,' without any reference to 
the fact of its being a forgery. The ' Nouvelle Biogra- 
phie Universelle,' also, in noticing the work under the 
head of ' Airoldi,' omits to mention this important fact. 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 49 

Note (B) to page 36. — Nobman Code. 

As regards the pretended original of the Norman Code, 
it may be observed that the handwriting is recent, and 
that the paper is such as was then sold at Palermo. The 
faults in style, in syntax, and orthography are the same 
as in the Supplements to the Martinian Code. It is evi- 
dently a translation from Italian into Arabic ; and the 
handwriting of the pretented original is the same as that 
of the copies furnished to the royal printing-office at 
Palermo, for the printing of the first volume of this 
Code, and that of the pretended Arabic translation from 
Livy, transmitted to M. Hager at the time of his first 
journey into Sicily, and which he preserved. 

When called on to produce his correspondence with 
Morocco, Yella, after three months' delay, pretended 
that it had been taken away from him by night by three 
assassins, whom he could never succeed in tracing. 

At the end of the Norman Code is the letter certifying 
that the manuscript had been sent off, which letter Yella 
pretended that he had received from the ambassador of 
Morocco. In this letter there are the same marks of 
falsehood as in the Code itself, and in the Supplements 
to the Martinian Code. Moreover the signature, both 
as to name and character, differs altogether from the 
authentic signatures of this ambassador. 

Note ( C ) to page 36. 

The following is the copy of the decree in condem- 
nation of Yella referred to in the text : — 

D 



50 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

" Motivum. Haud dubitandum censuimus, Yellam 
historiam rerum Siciliensium sub Arabum imperio, si 
non ex Codice Martiniano artificiose corrupto, ex Ara- 
bicis Scripturis, plurimis etsi inscite admixtis, certe 
hausisse. Librum verb Concilii xEgypti impensis regiis 
eodein ipso instante excusum, ex aliis Arabicis scripturis 
aliqua ex parte depromsisse, non paucis tamen adjectio- 
nibus et erroribus depravatum. Quae apographa, quee- 
cunque ea sint, ne proferret, usus est furto cominentitio, 
perjurio confirniato, ex quo aliquibus damnum est sub- 
secutum. Quum vero pro exbibitione horum originalium 
b [ad imminuenda fortassis nujusmodi crimina], «[plures 
atque plures inducias inaniter jam indulserimus], ad pro- 
lationem tandem sententiee duximus deveniendum, et 
ideo pronunciamus : Die prima febr XIY. indict, ann. 
1796. J. facta relatione in causis nscalibus, iste de 
Vella detrudatur in castrum excellentiae suae bene visum, 
quindecim annis. Beneficium S. Pancratii, pensio, ali- 
aque ejus bona fisco addicantur, deductis alimentis unci- 
arum 36 annualium, donee quantum regii aeris insumtum, 
restituatur. Alpbonsus arcbiepiscopus Heracliensis." — 
Mag. Encycl., ut ante, p. 356. 

I give the decree as it appears in the work before re- 
ferred to, in wnieh De Sacy sa} 7 s tbat he gives it, " tel 
qu'il m'a ete transmis." Two sentences of it, however, 
appear to me to have been by some accident transposed. 
By marking them respectively a and &, I have indicated 
what appears to me to be their natural order. 



LITEEAEY IMPOSTURES. 51 

Note (D) to page 38. Formosa. 

For the following description of this island I am 
indebted to rny excellent friend Mr. John Crawfurd. 
It is given in a most valuable work of reference pub- 
lished by him in 1856, entitled, ' A Descriptive Dic- 
tionary of the Indian Islands and adjacent Countries.' 

"Formosa, the Iha Formosa of the Portuguese, is 
called by the Chinese Tai-wan, or the Terraced Harbour. 
Near to and inhabited, as far as its aboriginal people 
are concerned, by the same race as the Philippines, it 
has some claim to be considered as part of them. It 
lies between north latitudes 21° 58' and 25° 15', and east 
longitudes 120° and 122°. It is of an oval form, its 
length being from north to south, its western side 
fronting the main land of China. The strait which lies 
between, called after the island, is, in its narrowest 
part, 80 miles broad, and in its widest 150. The total 
area of Formosa has been estimated at 14,000 square 
miles, so that it is by about one-fifth part larger than 
the classic island of Sicily. Its situation is in the very 
heart of the region of typhoons ; and it is, moreover, 
subject to severe earthquakes. 

" A range of high mountains runs through the island 
from north to south, the summits of which are clad in 
perpetual snow, from which it is concluded that they 
cannot be less than 12,000 feet above the level of the 
sea. An undulating plain, extending from the foot of 
the range to the sea, forms the western side of the 
island, leaving a large portion of the eastern a mountain 
mass. What its geological formation is has not been 

d 2 



52 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

ascertained; but that a portion is volcanic is certain, 
from the existence of craters yielding a large supply of 
sulphur, which is one of the staple exports of the island. 
"The population of Formosa is of two descriptions, 
an aboriginal and a Chinese ; the first for the most part 
confined to the fastnesses of the mountains, and the last 
occupying the extensive plain already named. The 
aboriginal inhabitants are of the same race as the fairer 
people of the Philippines, that is, of the Malay race ; 
but whether divided into different tribes, speaking one 
language, or having many tongues, has not been ascer- 
tained. The Dutch, during their short occupation of 
the island, obtained a vocabulary of a Forniosan lan- 
guage, which, on examination, is found to contain a few 
words of Malay and of Philippine languages, implying 
the probability that the first came through the medium 
of the last. The natives of Formosa are evidently in 
a very rude state, never having obtained that degree of 
civilisation which even the principal nations of the 
Philippines had reached when discovered by Europeans. 
A few of them have been tamed by the Chinese, and 
reduced by them to a kind of predial servitude. The 
Chinese settlers are for the most part emigrants from 
the province of Fokien, the inhabitants of which are 
known to be the most industrious, ingenious, and enter- 
prising of the empire. It is remarkable that Formosa, 
although its existence must have been sufficiently known 
to the Chinese from an early period, was never colonised 
by them until they were driven to take shelter in it by 
the invasion of the Manchoo Tartars at the beginning 
of the seventeenth century. The Spaniards appear early 



LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 53 

to haye formed a small settlement on the island ; and 
when the Dutch in 1624 began their establishment, they 
found a colony of Chinese, said to amount to 200,000. 
The present Chinese population is said to number two 
millions and a half. This, however, must be a great 
exaggeration, for, supposing them to occupy one-half 
the area of the island, and it is not likely that they 
occupy so much, the number would give 375 to the 
square mile, which would amount to the density of an 
old country, and not of a colony yielding the products 
of the earth cheaply, as Formosa is known to do. 

" The Dutch, after occupying a large part of Formosa 
for thirty-four years, were expelled from it in 1662 by 
a powerful Chinese pirate who had infested and invaded 
it. This catastrophe was the result of sheer incapacity 
and neglect, and it is remarkable that it should have 
happened at a time when their energy and enterprise 
were at their greatest height. Considering its temperate 
climate and its favourable geographical position, it is 
certain that Formosa might, under happier auspices, 
have become a great and prosperous European colony. 

" The soil of the plains and mountain slopes of For- 
mosa is described as being of eminent fertility, and it 
may fairly be concluded from the height and magnitude 
of its mountains that this fertility is promoted by an 
abundant irrigation. The chief products of its agri- 
culture are rice, wheat, pulse, millet, and sugar-cane. 
Its chief exports are rice, sugar, camphor, timber, bay- 
salt, and sulphur. Formosa forms part of the province 
of Fokien, the dense population of which is said to 
draw a large part of its supplies of food from it." 



APPENDIX. 



TKUTH. 



Persons who devote their time and labour to inquiring 
after Truth, especially if, as generally happens, they 
have been brought up in the bosom of error, and with 
minds enveloped in prejudice, most necessarily be pro- 
gressive in their discoveries. As they advance in their 
inquiries they will see reason to discard one error after 
another, till in process of time they will have receded 
to a much greater distance from the principles from 
which they set out than they first expected, or indeed 
could have believed possible ; and from the thought of 
which, had it been foretold, they would have recoiled 
with horror, and would have been ready to exclaim with 
Hazael, " What ! is thy servant a dog, that he should 
do this great thing?" With a much slower progress, 
and with far greater labour, do they develop truth ; and, 
like a man working at the bottom of a mine, bring up 
one after another the precious gems. In this way they 
pass through life ; and if anything leads them during 
the course of their inquiries to publish their thoughts 
to the world, it will often happen that they will appear, 
and will actually be, inconsistent with themselves at 
different times, in proportion as fresh light breaks in 



APPENDIX. 55 

upon their minds, by which old errors become more 
apparent, and new truths are more clearly and fully 
developed. Unthinking persons often charge this in- 
consistency upon them as a fault, which is in fact the 
best proof of progressive improvement. 

The sincere lover of Truth will never cease to inquire 
as long as the powers'] of intellect and investigation 
remain ; for the little which he knows inspires a thirst 
after further information, and he is conscious that, 
however successful the result of his inquiries may have 
been, all the knowledge which he has hitherto attained 
is as nothing in comparison with the vast unknown. It 
is said of one of the early reformers,* that when he lay 
upon his death-bed, if any present were discoursing 
upon some of those important theological questions 
which then agitated the Christian world, he would 
raise himself up in his bed, and would call to them to 
speak out, for that he should die with more comfort if 
he could learn some new truth before his departure. 
* * * * 

Let us then, my friends, who are sincere lovers of 
truth and of free and unbiassed inquiry, carefully 
review our progress ; and let us seriously consider what 
errors yet remain for us to discard, and what new 
truths we have yet to learn and to hold fast. Let us, 
like the Roman governor in the text, ask, What is 
Truth ? But let us not, like Pilate, break up the con- 

* Chytrseus of Eostock, who died a.d. 1600, aged seventy. — See 
Fuller's ' Lives and Deaths of Modern Divines.' 



56 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

ference without waiting for an answer, and from shame, 
or timidity, or some unworthy motive, recede from the 
inquiry, and abandon to their enemies and oppressors 
those who kindly offer their efficient aid to guide our 
steps into the paths of wisdom. 

" What is Truth ? " To this momentous inquiry 
who can give a satisfactory answer ? Ignorance and 
indolence, disguising themselves under the specious 
veil of moderation, exclaim, Truth is nowhere to be 
found. Inquiry is all in vain. The task is hopeless. 
The labour will be lost. 

■$£• 3r ?fc y£ 

But in order to discover Truth, prejudice of every 
kind must be honestly and resolutely discarded ; the 
prejudice of education, the prejudice of fashion, the 
prejudice of self-interest, the love of ease, the love of 
reputation, the love of popularity, the love of human 
applause. Truth must be sought after with a single eye, 
for its own sake. It must be pursued wherever it leads ; 
through honour and dishonour ; through evil report 
and good report ; through ease and pain ; through 
affluence and comfort, if such be the tenor of its course ; 
or, as much more frequently happens, through neglect 
and contempt ; through difficulty and obloquy ; through 
penury and privation ; through desertion and sufferings. 
They who thus love Truth, they who thus seek after 
her, they who thus devote themselves to her, they who 
thus sacrifice everything for her sake ; in a word, they 
who thus regard self as nothing and Truth as every- 



APPENDIX. 57 

thing, — these shall not ultimately be disappointed in 
their object : they shall not labour in vain ; they shall 
not lose their reward. They shall find the Truth they 
love, — that Truth which is the worthy object of their 
deliberate choice, of their best affections, — that Truth 
which justly occupies the chief seat in their hearts. 
And the Truth shall make them free : but if the Truth 
make them free, then are they free indeed. 

7P" ifc ^ "Jfc 

Theological controversy is often conducted with 
great heat and animosity ; human infirmity mingles 
with it, and human passion blinds the eye of the mind 
and misleads the understanding. But there is a way 
of managing controversy, and even theological con- 
troversy, with good sense, good temper, and good 
manners, — with a paramount desire, not of victory but 
of truth ; with a disposition to receive as w r ell as to 
communicate instruction ; with a readiness to resign 
an opinion when proved to be erroneous, as well as to 
correct the errors and prejudices of others ; and with a 
willingness to exercise candour and indulgence in cases 
where the clearest argument fails to produce convic- 
tion ; making every allowance for the unconquerable 
ascendancy of early and radical prejudice, and of fixed 
principles which have been long established in the 
breast, even of the intelligent and candid. Discus- 
sions so conducted are the most likely to elicit Truth ; 
and while they discover, they cannot fail to improve, an 
excellent moral state of mind. — Behharris Sermons. 

D 3 



58 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 



TOLEEATION. 

Christian charity does not consist in all entertaining 
the same opinions, or worshipping in the same place ; 
for this is impossible where men think and reason for 
themselves. Charity willingly extends to others the 
same unmolested right of private judgment which it 
claims for itself; and thinks and hopes the best of 
those who differ most widely in speculation and in dis- 
cipline, if it discerns nothing in their character incon- 
sistent with the spirit and the precepts of the Gospel ; 
and in acts of justice and beneficence it makes no 
distinction of party or sect, but uniformly adheres to 
the golden rule of doing to others as we could reason- 
ably expect others to do to us. This is real charity : 
this is the charity which the Apostle taught, which 
Jesus exemplified, and which God approves. — Belsharns 
Sermons. 

A reunion of Christians in the belief of all the 
essential doctrines of religion is not to be expected ; 
but, to use the golden words of Mr. Vansittart (Lord 
Bexley) in his excellent ' Letter to the Bishop of Llan- 
daff and John Coker, Esq.,' "There is an inferior 
degree of reunion, more within our prospect, and yet 
perhaps as perfect as human infirmity allows us to hope 
for ; wherein, though all differences of opinion should 
not be extinguished, yet they may be refined from all 
party prejudices and interested views, so softened by 



APPENDIX. 59 

the spirit of charity and mutual concession, and so 
controlled by agreement on the leading principles and 
zeal for the general interests of Christianity, that no 
sect or persuasion should be tempted to make religion 
subservient to secular views, or to employ political 
power to the prejudice of others. The existence of 
dissent will, perhaps, be inseparable from religious 
freedom, so long as the mind of man is liable to error ; 
but it is" not unreasonable to hope that hostility may 
cease, though perfect agreement cannot be established. 
If we cannot reconcile all opinions, let us reconcile all 
hearts." — Note to C. Butler s Life of Erasmus. 

Those among them that have not received our 
religion, yet do not fright any from it, and use none 
ill that goes over to it ; so that all the while I w T as 
there one man only was punished on this occasion 
He, being newly baptized, did, notwithstanding all 
that we could say to the contrary, dispute publicly con- 
cerning the Christian religion with more zeal than 
discretion, and with so much heat that he not only 
preferred our worship to theirs, but condemned all 
their rites as profane, and cried out against all that 
adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious persons, 
that w r ere to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon 
this, he, having preached these things often, was seized 
on, and, after a trial, he was condemned to banishment, 
not for having disparaged their religion, but for his 
inflaming the people to sedition ; for this is one of their 
ancientest laws, that no man ought to be punished for 



GO LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

his religion. At the first constitution of their govern- 
ment, Utopus having understood that before his coming 
among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in 
great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were 
so broken among themselves that he found it an easy 
thing to conquer them, since they did not unite their 
forces against him, but every different party in religion 
fought by themselves— upon that, after he had sub- 
dued them he made a law that every man might be 
of what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to 
draw others to it by the force of argument, and by 
amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness 
against those of other opinions ; but that he ought to 
use no other force but that of persuasion, and was 
neither to mix reproaches nor violence with it ; and 
such as did otherwise were condemned to banishment 
or slavery. 

This law was made by Utopus, not only for pre- 
serving the public peace, which he saw suffered much 
by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats in these 
matters, but because he thought the interest of religion 
itself required it. He judged it was not fit to deter- 
mine anything rashly in that matter ; and seemed to 
doubt whether those different forms of religion might 
not all come from God, who might inspire men dif- 
ferently, he being possibly pleased with a variety in 
it : and so he thought it was a very indecent and 
foolish thing for any man to frighten and threaten 
other men to believe anything because it seemed true 



APPENDIX. 61 

to him ; and -in case that one religion were certainly 
true, and all the rest false, he reckoned that the native 
force of truth would break forth at last, and shine 
bright, if it were managed only by the strength of 
argument, and with a winning gentleness ; whereas, if 
such matters were carried on by violence and tumults, 
then, as the wickedest sort of men is always the most 
obstinate, so the holiest and best religion in the world 
might be overlaid with so much foolish superstition, 
that it would be quite choked with it, as corn is with 
briers and thorns ; therefore he left men wholly to 
their liberty in this matter, that they might be free to 
believe as they should see cause ; only he made a 
solemn and severe law against such as should so far 
degenerate from the dignity of human nature as to 
think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the 
world was governed by chance, without a wise over- 
ruling Providence. For they did all formerly believe 
that there was a state of rewards and punishments to 
the good and bad after this life ; and they look on 
those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted 
men, since they degrade so noble a being as our soul 
is, and reckon it to be no better than a beast's ; so far 
are they from looking on such men as fit for human 
society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered common- 
wealth ; since a man of such principles must needs, as 
oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs. 
For there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is 
afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing 



62 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

after death, will not stand to break through all the laws 
of his country, either by fraud or force, that so he may 
satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold 
these maxims, either to honours or offices, nor employ 
them in any public trust, but despise them, as men of 
base and sordid minds. Yet they do not punish them, 
because they lay this down for a ground, that a man 
cannot make himself believe anything he pleases ; nor 
do they drive any to dissemble their thoughts by 
threatenings, so that men are not tempted to lie or dis- 
guise their opinions among them : which, being a sort 
of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians, especially before 
the common people. But they do suffer and even 
encourage them to dispute concerning them in private 
with their priests, and other grave men, being confident 
that they will be cured of those mad opinions by 
having reason laid before them. 

* *■ * * 

Though there are many different forms of religion 
among them, yet all these, how various soever, agree 
in the main point, which is the worshipping the 
Divine Essence ; and therefore there is nothing to 
be seen or heard in their temples in which the several 
persuasions among them may not agree ; for every 
sect performs those rites that are peculiar to it, in 
their private houses, nor is there anything in the public 
worship that contradicts the particular ways of those 
different sects. There are no Images for God in their 
temples, so that every one may represent him to his 



APPENDIX. 63 

thoughts, according to the way of his religion ; nor do 
they call this one God hy any other name but that of 
Mithras, which is the common name by which they all 
express the Divine Essence, whatsoever otherwise they 
think it to be ; nor are there any prayers among them 
but such as every one of them may use without preju- 
dice to his own opinions. — Move's Utopia. 



PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 



When I say the right of private judgment, I mean 
that every individual Christian has a right to judge for 
himself by the Word of God whether that which is 
put before him as religious truth is God's truth, or is 
not. When I say the duty of private judgment, I 
mean that God requires every Christian man to use 
the right of which I have just spoken : to compare 
man's words and man's writings with God's revelation, 
and to make sure that he is not deluded and taken in. 
And when I say the necessity of private judgment, I 
mean this— that it is absolutely needful for every 
Christian who loves his soul, and would not be de- 
ceived, to exercise that right, and discharge that duty, 
to which I have referred, seeing that experience shows 
that the neglect of private judgment has always been 
the forerunner of immense evils in the Church of 
Christ. The Apostle Paul urges all these three points 



G4 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

upon your notice when he uses those remarkable words, 
" Prove all things," 

* * * * 

There was a time, before the Reformation, when 
the darkness over the face of Europe was a darkness 
that might be felt. The General Councils of the 
Church are not infallible. When the whole Church is 
gathered together in a General Council, what says our 
22nd Article ? " They may err, and sometimes have 
erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Where- 
fore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation 
have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be 
declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture." 
So also with particular Churches. Any one of them 
may err, and prove itself fallible. Many of them 
have fallen foully, or have been swept away. Where 
is the Church of Ephesus at this day ? Where the 
Church of Sardis at the present time? Where the 
Church of Hippo in Africa? Where the Church of 
Carthage ? They are all gone ; not a vestige of any 
of them is left. Will you then be content to err 
merely because the Church errs ? Will your company 
be any excuse for your error? Will your erring in 
company with the Church remove your responsibility 
for your own soul ? Brethren, it were surely a thousand 
times better for a man to stand alone, and be saved, 
than to err in company with the Church, and be lost. 

But suppose you are resolved to believe whatever 
your ministers say, without taking up the ground of 



APPENDIX. 65 

believing what the Church says. Ministers, again, are 
not infallible. The very best of them are only men. 
Call us bishops, priests, deacons, or whatever names 
you please, we are all earthen vessels at the very best. 
I speak not merely of popes who have led abominable 
lives; I would rather point to the very best of Pro- 
testants, and say, Beware of looking upon them as in- 
fallible ; beware of thinking that if you believe the 
word of man (whoever that man may be) you cannot 
err. Luther held cons instantiation — that was a mighty 
error; Zuinglius, the Swiss Reformer, went out to 
battle, and died in the fight — that was a mighty error ; 
Calvin, the Geneva Reformer, advised the burning of 
Servetus — that was a mighty error ; Cranmer and 
Ridley urged the putting of Hooper into prison because 
of some trifling disputes about vestments — that was a 
mighty error ; — Whitgift persecuted the Puritans — that 
was a mighty error ; Wesley and Toplady, in the last 
century, quarrelled fiercely about Calvinism — that was 
a mighty error. Brethren, if your religion hangs upon 
any minister, whoever he may be, there is no saying 
into what fearful mistakes you may possibly be led. 
Follow us so far as we follow Christ, but not a hair's- 
breadth farther; believe whatever we can show you 
out of the Bible, but do not believe a single word more. 
Neglect the duty of private judgment, and you may 
find to your cost the truth of what Whitby says — " The 
best of overseers do sometimes make oversight ;" and 
may experience the truth of what the Lord said to the 



GQ LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

Pharisees, " When the blind lead the blind, both fall 
into the ditch." 

And, brethren, as it is impossible to overrate the 
evils that may arise from neglecting private judgment, 
so also it is impossible to overrate the blessings which 
from a right use of it have continually flowed. The 
greatest discoveries in science and in philosophy, beyond 
all controversy, have arisen from a use of private judg- 
ment. To this we owe the discovery of Galileo that 
the earth went round the sun, and not the sun round 
the earth. To this we owe Columbus's discovery of 
the new continent of America. To this we owe Har- 
vey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. To this 
we owe Jenner's discovery of vaccination. To this 
we owe the printing-press, the steam-engine, the electric 
telegraph, railways, and gas. For all these we are 
indebted to men who dared to think for themselves. 
They were not content with the beaten path of those 
who had gone before ; they were not satisfied with 
taking for granted that which their fathers believed 
was true, both in philosophy and science ; they made 
experiments for themselves ; they brought old-esta- 
blished theories to the proof, and found that they were 
worthless ; they proclaimed new systems, and invited 
men to examine them, and test their truth ; they bore 
storms of obloquy and ridicule unmoved ; they heard 
the clamour of prejudiced lovers of old traditions with- 
out flinching ; and they prospered and succeeded in 



APPENDIX. 67 

what they did. We see it now, and we who live in the 
nineteenth century are reaping the fruit of their use of 
private judgment. 

As (by way of illustration) you see it has been in 
science, so also it has been in the history of the Chris- 
tian religion. The martyrs who stood alone in their 
days, and shed that blood which has been the seed of 
Christ's Gospel throughout the world ; the Reformers 
who, one after another, rose up in their might to enter 
the lists with the Church of Rome — all did what they 
did, suffered what they suffered, performed what they 
performed, simply because they exercised their private 
judgment about what was Christ's truth. Private 
judgment made the Waldenses, the Albigenses, and 
the Lollards count not their lives dear to them, rather 
than believe the doctrines of the Church of Rome. 
Private judgment made Wickliffe search the Bible in 
our land, denounce the errors of Rome and all her 
impostures, translate the Scriptures into the vulgar 
tongue, and become " the morning-star " of the Re- 
formation. Private judgment made Luther examine 
Tetzel's abominable system of indulgences by the 
light of the Word ; private judgment led him on, step 
by step, from one thing to another, guided by the 
same light, till at length the gulf between him and 
Rome was a gulf that could not be passed, and the 
Pope's power in Germany was completely broken. 
Private judgment made our own English Reformers 



68 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

examine for themselves and inquire for themselves as 
to the true nature of that corrupt system under which 
they had been born and brought up : it made them 
cast off the abominations of Popery, and then circulate 
the Bible among the laity. Private judgment made 
them draw from the Bible our Articles, compile our 
Prayer-book, and constitute the Church of England as 
it is. They broke the fetters of tradition, and dared 
to think for themselves. Not taking for granted 
Rome's pretensions and assertions, they examined them 
all by the Bible, and because they would not abide 
the examination they broke with Rome, and cast her 
off completely, All the blessings of Protestantism in 
England, all that we have and are enjoying at this 
very day, we owe to the right exercise of private judg- 
ment ; and if, therefore, we do not honour private 
judgment, we are thankless and ungrateful indeed, 



And beware, my brethren, of being moved by the 
specious argument, that it is humility to disallow pri- 
vate judgment, that it is humility to have no opinion of 
your own, that it is the part of a true Christian not to 
think for himself. Such humility is a false humility, a 
humility that does not deserve that blessed name ; 
call it rather laziness, call it rather idleness, call it 
rather sloth. It makes a man strip himself of all his 
responsibility ; it makes him throw the whole burden 



APPENDIX. 69 

of his soul into the hands of the minister and the 
hands of the Church ; it gives a man a mere vicarious 
religion, a religion by which he places his conscience 
and all his spiritual concerns under the care of others ; 
he need not trouble himself, he need no longer think 
for himself; he has embarked in a safe ship, and 
placed his soul under a safe pilot, and says, " I need 
take no more care." Brethren, beware of supposing 
that this deserves the name of humility — refusing to 
exercise the gift that God has given you, refusing to 
employ the sword of the Spirit which God has forged 
for the use of your hand. Blessed be God ! our fore- 
fathers did not act upon such principles. Had they 
done so, we should never have had the Keformation ; 
had they done so, we might have been bowing down 
to the image of the Virgin Mary at this moment, 
praying to the spirits of departed saints, or having a 
service performed in Latin. Brethren, as long as you 
live, resolve, every one of you, that you will read for 
yourselves, think for yourselves, judge of the Bible for 
yourselves, in the great matters of your soul. 



And above all, brethren, as long as you live, look 
forward to the great day of judgment ; think of the 
solemn account which every one of us shall have to 
give in that day before the judgment-seat of Christ. 
We shall not be judged by Churches ; we shall not be 



70 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

judged by whole congregations ; we shall be judged 
individually, each by himself. What shall it profit you 
or me in that day to say, " Lord, Lord, I believed 
everything the Church told me ; I received and be- 
lieved everything ordained ministers set before me ; 
I thought that whatever the Church and the ministers 
said must be right " ? — Rijles Sermon preached before 
the British Reformation Society. Published at No. 8, 
Exeter Hall 



PUBLIC SPIKIT. 



Neither Montaigne in writing his Essays, nor Des 
Cartes in building new worlds, nor Burnet in framing 
an antediluvian Earth, no, nor Newton in discovering 
and establishing the true laws of nature on experiment 
and a sublimer geometry, felt more intellectual joys, 
than he feels who is a real patriot, who bends all the 
force of his understanding, and directs all his thoughts 
and actions, to the good of his country. When 
such a man forms a political scheme, and adjusts 
various and seemingly independent parts in it to one 
great and good design, he is transported by imagina- 
tion, or absorbed in meditation, as much and as agree- 
ably as they : and the satisfaction that arises from 
the different importance of these objects in every step 



APPENDIX. 71 

of the work, is vastly in his favour. It is here that 
the speculative philosopher's labour and pleasure end. 
But he who speculates in order to act, goes on and 
carries his scheme into execution. His labour conti- 
nues, it varies, it increases ; but so does his pleasure 
too. The execution indeed is often traversed, by un- 
foreseen and untoward circumstances, by the perverse- 
ness or treachery of friends, and by the power or malice 
of enemies : but the first and the last of these animate, 
and the docility and fidelity of some men make amends 
for the perverseness and treachery of others. While a 
great event is in suspense, the action warms, and the 
very suspense, made up of hope and fear, maintains 
no unpleasing agitation in the mind. If the event is 
decided successfully, such a man enjoys pleasure pro- 
portionable to the good he has done ; a pleasure like 
to that which is attributed to the Supreme Being, on a 
survey of His works. If the event is decided otherwise, 
and usurping courts or overbearing parties prevail, 
such a man has still the testimony of his conscience, 
and a sense of the honour he has acquired, to soothe 
his mind and support his courage. For although the 
course of state affairs be to those who meddle in them 
like a lottery, yet it is a lottery wherein no good man 
can be a loser : he may be reviled, it is true, instead 
of being applauded, and may suffer violence of many 
kinds. I will not say, like Seneca, that the noblest 
spectacle which God can behold is a virtuous man 



72 LITERARY IMPOSTURES. 

suffering and struggling with afflictions : but this I 
will say, that the second Cato, driven out of the forum 
and dragged to prison, enjoyed more inward pleasure, 
and maintained more outward dignity, than they who 
insulted him, and who triumphed in the ruin of their 
country. — Bolingbrolte, on the Spirit of Patriotism. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS 



OF 



L A M A E T 1 7$ E. 



When I last had the pleasure of addressing you I en- 
deavoured, not, I hope, altogether without success, to 
combine a practical purpose with a subject which might 
seem, at first sight, to be a subject rather curious than 
useful— to be matter of literary interest, and of literary 
interest alone. I endeavoured, by glancing at three 
or four of those leading literary impostures which have 
been from time to time attempted, to awaken in my 
audience a due sense of the importance of inquiry as a 
means to Truth. Truth, it has been said, lies in a 
well, and I was anxious to show, particularly to my 
younger hearers, that if they wished for truth they 
must penetrate below the surface. I endeavoured at 
the same time to lay before them a picture, no doubt 
feeble and imperfect, but drawn with a view to prac- 
tical ends, of Truth as exhibited in its bearings on the 
mind of man, and on the general course and conduct 
of human affairs. I was anxious, also, to point out to 
them the interest and the glory of independent mental 
efforts — those efforts, free alike from blind and servile 

£ 



74 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

deference to mere authority on the one hand, and from 
overweening confidence on the other, which are a main 
source of all that is truly great in literature, and noble 
in the character of man. 

The subject of my present lecture is not in any way 
connected with the subject of that to which I refer. 
I touched then on literary impostures. I have now to 
deal with literary realities, for the most part of a bright 
and genial kind. The distinguished poet, traveller, 
statesman, and historian, of whose eventful life I shall 
present you with some few details, and of whose 
speeches and works, historical and poetical, but more 
particularly the latter, I shall offer such extracts, 
coupled with such comments, as I may think not un- 
worthy of your attention, occupied, within the memory 
of all now present, the most prominent political post in 
France — that great country once our enemy, and now, 
thank God! our best ally. He shot suddenly across 
the page of history with a kind of meteoric brightness, 
and then as suddenly disappeared — disappeared, that 
is to say, so far as concerned his political position. 

There are few phenomena more brilliant in the his- 
tory of men and nations, there are none in the annals 
of civil heroism more bright or glorious, than the posi- 
tion of Lamartine at the Hotel de Ville in 1848, 
arresting, single-handed, and by the force of his mag- 
nificent eloquence alone, the passions and furious will 



OF LAMARTINE. 75 

of an exasperated people. There is nothing in history 
more startling than the fall of one who, having saved 
society in 1848, could not shortly afterwards command 
a seat in the National Assembly of his country. 
Whatever may be his faults, there is magnanimity in 
the man whom neglect so unparalleled could not pro- 
voke to bitterness or angry recrimination. 

In speaking of Lamartine as a poet I may say sin- 
cerely that, of all the modern poets, not of France 
alone, but of any country, except England, with whose 
writings taste or accident has rendered me familiar, 
Lamartine is the poet whom, so far as regards his 
earlier poetry, I prefer. His ' Meditations ' have been 
my travelling companions ; and if circumstances com- 
pelled me to reduce to some fifteen or twenty the 
numerous works which I have collected, the ' Medita- 
tions ' and ' Harmonies ' of Lamartine would be in the 
number of those works which I should feel most anxious 
to retain. There are other modern poets in France whose 
works contain fine passages, and many exceedingly 
beautiful poems. There are fine bursts of eloquence, an 
independent national spirit, a glowing patriotic fervour, 
a generous and energetic love of freedom, and an utter 
detestation of slavery in all its forms, in the passionate 
outpourings of Delavigne. There are lyric grace, and 
melody, and beauty, and matchless mastery of lan- 
guage, not unaccompanied with true elevation of senti- 

e 2 



76 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

ment, in the l Autumnal Leaves ' of Victor Hugo. 
His beautiful 'Prayer for all' must wake, congenial 
echoes in the hearts of men of every age and country. 
There are point, and wit, and gaiety, felicity and 
sweetness, severe and telling strokes of satire, in the 
admired and popular songs of Beranger, who covered 
the stupid Bourbons with not unmerited ridicule, and 
paved, it has been said, the way for Louis Napoleon 
to the Presidency and the Empire. The songs of 
Beranger, however, are soiled and degraded by licen- 
tiousness. There is nothing in the poetry of Lamartine 
to plant a frown upon the brow of Virtue, or a blush 
upon the cheek of Beauty. I would rather have been 
the author of his ' Harmonies ' and ' Meditations ' 
than of all that Delavigne, or Hugo, or Beranger have 
ever written. 

French poetry was never in a true sense popular, 
and has been, indeed, comparatively speaking, but little 
read or known, in England. When read, it has been 
read far less as poetry than as matter of education and 
for the sake of the language and the graces of style. 
The poetry, poetical taste, and character of the French 
have been, at all events up to the time of Lamartine 
and Victor Hugo, essentially different from that of the 
English. In English poetry Nature has had to a great 
extent her own way — in French poetry Art was ever 
uppermost. The former addressed itself more par- 



OF LAMARTINE. 77 

ticularly to the heart, and availed itself of the influence 
of imagination and passion as means whereby to reach 
and influence the deep recesses of the soul. The latter 
addressed itself almost exclusively to the head. It 
sought to captivate the understanding by point, in- 
genuity, epigrammatism, and concentration of idea, 
while it satisfied the requirements of a cultivated taste 
by the graces of a polished style and the purity of a 
soulless diction. The poetry of England was Nature's 
humble votary, her handmaid, and obedient minister ; 
the poetry of France was her relentless mistress, con- 
straining her to the adoption of cold forms, alike fatal 
to her inborn vigour and to the development of her 
highest beauty. The poetry of England sought its 
images in the country, and gathered choice similitudes 
and fragrant blossoms, full of life and joy and fresh- 
ness, in the midst of scenes which Nature's graceful 
negligence and lavish hand had visited to adorn and 
bless. The heath, the forest, the tangled brake and 
shadowy glen, the waving reeds, the whispering trees 
and thickets, vocal with a thousand tongues — the river 
leaping boldly from rock to rock, or flowing on through 
flowery margins in tranquil beauty to the sea — the 
lowing kine, the flocks, the shepherd-boys, and all the 
attributes of pure and simple rustic life, were made in 
turn to serve the purposes and multiply the charms and 
the attractiveness of English song. 



78 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

The poetry of England, too, addressed itself to the 
people without distinction of class or station. It spoke 
in all the strength, and energy, and varying beauty of 
that copious and expressive language which circum- 
stances and the blending of mingled nations had made 
its own — that language which, as we were told the 
other day in a most beautiful and impressive lecture, 
our English Chaucer laboured so successfully to enrich, 
and Caxton to diffuse throughout the world. The 
poetry of France, on the other hand, sought its images 
and inspiration in the town, and culled its materials 
in the midst of the regal splendour, the artificial refine- 
ments, and laboured graces of courtly life. It ad- 
dressed itself almost exclusively to the higher orders, 
and sought to mould its strains to the requirements of 
elegance and regal taste. The language itself was 
little suited to poetry of the highest order. Its meta- 
phors* were for the most part unpoetical, its idioms 
artificial and constrained, nor was it sufficiently sonor- 
ous to add dignity and elevation to the poet's strains. 
It was not a hardy out-of-doors, but a tender hot-house 
plant, the creature of courts and of academies. It 
wanted the boldness, originality, vigour, and freedom, 
and that indefinite vagueness, which belong to lan- 

* There is an excellent article on French poetry, of several sug- 
gestions in which I have availed myself, in vol. xxxvii. of the 
' Edinburgh Review,' p. 407. 



OF LAMARTINE. 79 

guages more truly popular in their growth, and which 
are highly favourable to poetical effect It was too 
precise, too polished, too artificial in its structure for 
those free outpourings of imagination and passion which 
in other languages have winged the soul of song. The 
result was such as might have been expected — melo- 
dious and polished versification, an almost faultless 
purity of style and diction, and a poetry which charmed 
the ear and pleased the mind, but failed almost entirely 
to touch the heart. This poetry, indeed, in some, but 
those not the higher departments, attained to an almost 
unrivalled excellence, and possessed peculiar graces 
and fascinations all its own. The elegance of its light 
and playful productions it would be difficult to equal, 
perhaps impossible to surpass. In epigram, too, in 
satire, and in fable, it reached the highest points of 
eminence. Boileau, who, as a satirist, was Pope's 
model, was, if not superior, at all events in no degree 
inferior to his English rival. In fable La Fontaine 
stands alone, and, it may be added, easily supreme. 
France, too, may well be proud of having produced 
such poets as Moliere and Corneille, but they spoke 
rather to the head than to the heart. 

Prior and the poets of the time of the Restoration,* 

* School of France, introduced after trie Restoration — Waller, 
Dryden, Addison, Prior, and Pope — which, has continued to our 
own times. — T. Gray, Letter to T. Warton ; Mant's Life of T. 
Warton, lxi. 

You 



80 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

when, under the influence of the foreign taste of the 
Court, poetry went astray in the direction of French 
models, have never maintained a lasting hold on the 
English heart. They failed to turn aside the poetical 
taste of their countrymen from its older and far more 
legitimate and national channel. Prior, indeed, did 
much for the general improvement both of style and 
language in our English writers, and emulated, not 
without success, the colloquial ease, pleasantry, and 
point of his French prototypes ; but he did little for 
genuine English poetry — the poetry of nature and of 
the heart His * Henry and Emma ' is an unimpas- 
sioned piece of tedious though graceful versification. 
Its pagan machinery is out of place in a dialogue be- 
tween a lover and his mistress, and happily he was 
one of the last of the race of poets who relied on such 
machinery for ornament and effect.* In France such 
machinery has been extensively employed, down even 
to a recent date, by writers of what is called the classical 
school. Andre Chenier, in his beautiful poem entitled 
' The Young Captive,' makes a young girl in prison 
speak of Pales,t the goddess of sheepfolds among the 



You have admirably characterized the poets of Charles II. 's age 
in your preface to the ' Theatrum Poetarum.' — Southey's Letter to 
Sir E. Brydges, Autob. of Sir E. B., ii. 278. 

* Campbell's Essay on Poetry, p. 252. 

f In my published translation of that poem I have taken the 
liberty of substituting " Nature " for Pales. 



OF LAMARTINE. 81 

Romans, of whom probably she had never heard. 
Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Juno, Mercury, Cupid, 
and Diana, are all very well in the poetry of the Greeks 
and Romans, and may not inappropriately figure even 
in the love strains of Tibullus, but in French and 
English poetry they are entirely out of place. Prior 
and the writers of his school did not, as I have said, 
maintain their place, or perpetuate their influence, 
among the poets of the land. Thomson with Cowper * 
and others led back English poetry to the source of her 
earliest, truest, and noblest inspiration, Nature. 

Lamartine is one of those who have sought, as I have 
said, and not unsuccessfully, to effect a revolution in 
the poetical taste of France — to bring back Nature 
from her too protracted exile to the warm and genial 
world of song. Like Victor Hugo, he belongs to the 
romantic, as distinguished from what is called the 
classical school — which latter school they may be said 
to have overthrown. He was born in the year 1790 at 
Macon in the department of the Saone and Loire. 
His family name was De Prat, and he took the name 
of Lamartine after an uncle whose property he inhe- 
rited in 1820. He has given us a history of his early 
days in a work which he has published, entitled, 
' Memoirs of my Youth,' to which I must refer you for 
a full account of his early life and education. His 
* Thomson, b. 1700, d. 1748 ; Cowper, b. 1731, d. 1800. 

E 3 



82 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

grandfather was an old gentleman who had served long 
as a cavalry officer in the armies of Louis XIV. and 
Louis XV. The possessor of a fine estate in the 
neighbourhood of his birthplace, he married a rich 
heiress of Franche Comte, who brought him as her 
dowry fair lands and extensive forests in the environs 
of St. Cfaude, and in the mountain gorges of Jura, not 
far from Geneva. He had six children, three sons and 
three daughters. The father of the poet was the 
youngest of this numerous family. He was placed in 
his father's regiment, and, according to the custom and 
prejudices of the age to which he belonged, as a younger 
son, he was destined never to marry — a destiny which 
circumstances changed. He had become acquainted, 
through his sister, who was a member of one of those 
chapters of noble canonesses which existed at that 
period in France, and which exist at the present day 
in Germany, with a lady to whom he was afterwards 
married. The name of the lady was Alise des Roys. 
Her father was comptroller-general of the finances to 
the Duke of Orleans. Her mother was under-gover- 
ness to the children of that prince, and was also the 
favourite of that fair and virtuous Duchess of Orleans 
whom the Revolution respected while driving her from 
her palace, banishing her children into exile, and lead- 
ing her husband to the scaffold. Being part of the 
household of the duke, they resided in the Palais 



OF LAMARTINE. 83 

Royal in winter, and at St. Cloud during the summer 
months. Lamartine's mother was born at the latter 
place, and was brought up there with Louis Philippe, 
afterwards King of the French. When Voltaire, on 
the occasion of his last visit to Paris — a visit which 
was one of triumph — went to pay his respects to the 
princes of the house of Orleans, the mother of the 
poet, although then not more than seven or eight 
years old, was present at the interview, which left a 
deep impression on her mind. The father of the poet, 
who had not quitted the army at the time of his mar- 
riage, was personally attached to Louis XVI. He 
fought with the constitutional guard and the Swiss in 
defence of the chateau of the Tuileries, in August, 
1792. When the king had abandoned his dwelling 
the combat became a massacre, and the father of the 
poet was wounded by a gunshot in the palace-garden. 
He escaped, but was arrested while crossing the Seine 
in the palace-gardens opposite the Invalides, was con- 
ducted to Vaugirard, and imprisoned for a few hours 
in a cellar. He was however claimed and rescued by 
the gardener of one of his relations, who was then a 
municipal officer of the commune, and who recognised 
him by an almost miraculous accident. Having thus 
escaped death, he returned to his wife. He lived from 
that time in the deepest obscurity in his country retreat 
at Milly, on the banks of the Saone, which had been 



84 LIFE AND WHITINGS 

assigned to him on his marriage, until the days when 
the revolutionary persecutions left no asylum (but a 
prison or a scaffold) for those who were attached to the 
ancient order of things. Of his subsequent arrest and 
confinement in the prison of Macon, and his liberation 
at the close of the Reign of Terror, after which he 
went to reside at Milly, the poet has given us in the 
Memoirs of his Youth a sketch most graphic and of 
painful interest. To these Memoirs, to which I am 
chiefly indebted for my account of the period which 
they comprise, I must refer you for further details. I 
have dwelt somewhat at length on the family history 
and social position of his mother, because it was at 
Milly, under her auspices, that the poet received his 
earliest instruction. 

In the narrative which he has published of his 
travels in the East we find a very touching allusion to 
the " beautiful Bible of Royaumont," which seems to 
have been a sort of heirloom in his family, and in 
which, as he there tells us, his mother taught him to 
read. The beautiful lines addressed by Mrs. Hemans 
to a family Bible, stirring thoughts which long had 
slept, will probably in connexion with this incident 
occur to many of my hearers. * 

He soon became desirous of visiting the scenes with 

* These are given in the seventh volume of Blackwood's 
edition of her works, page 243. 



OF LAMARTINE. 85 

which he had in this way grown familiar, and the 
project which his young imagination had conceived he 
afterwards carried out in the maturity of manhood. 

From Milly, which he has celebrated in song, he 
was sent to an establishment for education at Lyons, 
which he entered, he says, as a condemned criminal 
enters his cell. He was utterly unable to endure the 
restraints imposed upon him and the uncongenial habits 
of his companions. He ran away from school after 
an interval of a few months, but was overtaken and 
captured by the director of the establishment escorted 
by a gendarme. He was seized, his hands were 
bound, and he was conducted back to school, burning 
with shame and indignation, amidst a crowd of curious 
villagers who had gathered together to see him pass. 
He was then shut up alone in a sort of dungeon, where 
he passed two months, without communicating with 
any one except the head-master, who demanded from 
him a confession of his repentance, and subsequently 
sent him back to his parents. He was ill received by 
all the family, except his mother, who obtained a pro- 
mise that he should not be sent back to Lyons. He 
was afterwards sent to a college directed by the Jesuits, 
at Belley, on the frontiers of Savoy. This establishment 
enjoyed at that time a high character, not only in 
France, but in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. His 
mother accompanied him thither. He has paid, both 



86 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

in his Memoirs and in the stanzas which bear the title 
of an ' Adieu to the College of Belley,' a high tribute to 
the kindness, the piety, the virtues, and educational 
skill of the inmates and directors of that establishment. 
On quitting the College of Belley he returned to Milly, 
and devoted himself to the study of such works as 
inclination from time to time suggested. He devoured, 
as he tells us, all the poems and all the romances in 
which love rose to the height of sentiment, to the ideal 
of an etherial worship. 

I must refer you to the published Memoirs of his 
Youth for the history and termination of his earliest 
love. The object of it was a young fair girl called 
Lucy (he has given us no other name), the daughter 
of a landowner in the neighbourhood of his father's 
residence. I must refer you to the same source for an 
account of his visit to Italy, for the history, romantic 
incidents, and melancholy close of his attachment to 
Graziella, the beautiful daughter of an Italian fisher- 
man. She had fallen in love with the poet, who lodged 
in her father's house, and had shown the family some 
kindness. At the earnest request, however, of her 
family, she had suffered herself to be betrothed to a 
cousin, who was, with reference to his position in life, 
well off. As the nuptial day approached her heart 
failed her. She fled precipitately from her home, and 
attempted to take refuge in a convent. The poet was 



OF LAMARTINE. 87 

* 
summoned back to France ; but the shock it seems was 

too much for Graziella, who died soon afterwards, 
before the expiration of the period which had been 
fixed on for Lamartine's return to Italy. This attach- 
ment seems to have raised a severe conflict in the heart 
of the poet, between his worldly pride, the influences 
and prejudices of his social' position, and his affections. 
As he was then but nineteeen, and not probably in a 
position enabling him to marry, there is something, 
perhaps, to be said for him on the score of youth. He 
has spoken, however, in such strong terms of self- 
condemnation in his Memoirs, that he has saved his 
critics the necessity of pausing either to palliate or 
condemn. 

In 1814 he entered the military household of 
Louis XVIII., like all the young men of his age whose 
families were associated by former recollections with, 
the ancient monarchy. In his Memoirs he gives an 
interesting sketch of the events which followed Na- 
poleon's return from Elba, and of the part which was 
borne by the writer himself in those occurrences. He 
speaks of that return as bringing back a military 
regime and tyranny, and considers it the result of an 
armed conspiracy, and not by any means of a national 
movement. He deplores the flexibility of a nation 
bending before successive regimes, and submitting to 
the despotism of the Empire. He speaks as a genuine 



88 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

friend of liberty, and as one whom military successes, 
however brilliant, could not dazzle or lead astray. 

His Memoirs contain an account of his subsequent 
visit to Switzerland, — of his return to Paris after the 
fall of the Empire to resume his duties in the body- 
guard of the king, — of the commencement of his diplo- 
matic career when that guard was disbanded, — of his 
friendships with Aymon de Virieu and Louis de Vignet, 
and his acquaintance with Joseph de Maistre, the 
author of the celebrated ' Evenings of St. Petersburgh.' 
He then glances at an interval of two years in his life 
during which he says that gaming at Milan, Paris, and 
Naples had been his principal occupation, and in 
which he made no notes, since, had he made them, he 
would have had nothing to describe save irregularities, 
faults, and misfortunes. He gives a sketch of the life 
and habits of the Abbe Dumont, the curate of the 
village of Bussieres, the parish to which Milly belonged, 
and concludes a volume, which contains many passages 
of interest and beauty, by new allusions to the fate of 
Graziella, the subject to him of bitter and sorrowful 
remorse. 

The * Meditations' are the first and most remarkable 
of Lamartine's poetical productions. On these, together 
with the 'Harmonies,' some minor pieces, detached 
passages, and lyrics scattered throughout his longer 
poems, his fame as a poet must depend. Notwithstand- 



OF LAMARTINE. 89 

ing the great beauties of the ' Meditations,' Lamartine 
had some difficulty in finding any person willing to 
become the publisher of them. At length, however, 
a publisher was found, and the poems appeared at 
Paris in 1820. The name of the author was withheld, 
but the success which they met with is said to have 
been more brilliant than had been obtained in France 
by any writer of the age subsequently to the publication 
of the 'Genius of Christianity' by Chateaubriand. 
It is mentioned in the * Gallery of Illustrious Cotem- 
poraries ' that 45,000 copies of the ' Meditations ' were 
sold within four years from the time at which they 
were first published. The immense popularity of the 
'Meditations' was chiefly due, no doubt, to their 
intrinsic merit, but intrinsic merit would hardly alone 
explain success so sudden and unprecedented. Without 
detracting anything from the merit of the poems or 
from the beauties with which they abound throughout, 
it must be admitted that they owed something to the 
circumstances, of the age in which they made their 
appearance and their well-judged adaptation to them. 
They satisfied a want, inarticulate perhaps, but deeply 
felt and far extended — a want arising in those tender, 
loving souls which the cold analytical and materialistic 
tendencies of the eighteenth century had chilled almost 
into despair — the want of those who longed to rise 
upon the warm and genial breath of song from the 



90 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

stern realities of the visible world of sense, to the truths, 
ideal beauties, and delights of that world which is 
spiritual and unseen. 

The influence of Saint Martin and others on the 
genius and writings of the poet has been eloquently 
touched upon by Sainte Beuve in his collection of 
Contemporary Portraits. He quotes a passage from 
Saint Martin, which seems, he says, to be a prelude to 
the ' Harmonies ' of Lamartine. Rousseau too, as well 
as Bernardin de St. Pierre, Madame de Stael, and 
Chateaubriand, exercised, beyond all question, a power- 
ful influence on his mind and poetry. The tendencies 
of all were spiritual, and in the direction of that bright 
and beautiful dreamland to which in every age and 
country enthusiastic and tender souls aspire. 

The ' Meditations ' comprise, with other poems, the 
' Address to Lord Byron,' ' The Gulf of Baiae,' 'Autumn,' 
6 Evening,' and ' The Lake.' These poems are much 
admired in France, and are considered, indeed, the gems 
of his entire poetical works, but ' The Lake ' is perhaps 
the most popular of them all. Its popularity has been 
greatly increased by the beautiful music of Neider- 
meyer, with which it has long been inseparably united. 

The 'Meditations' are characterised by great elevation 
of sentiment, a sweet and soothing religious melancholy, 
a dreamy vagueness of thought and feeling highly 
favourable to poetical effect. They are full of tender- 



OF LAMARTINE. 91 

ness and spiritualized affection, and the melancholy 
which gives them their prevailing tone never breaks 
out into bitterness or misanthropy, never lapses into 
despair. The strains are strains of love, though touched 
by sorrow into beauty, and falling dirge-like on the 
heart. The tints which charm the eye are most com- 
monly tints autumnal — the torch of hope burns brightly, 
though it burns, for the most part, over funeral 
piles. The falling leaf, the mouldering fane, the 
withered hope, the love which suffered shipwreck — 
young love's too frequent fate — the clouds with which 
memory will sometimes overshadow the sombre land- 
scape of the past— are the objects and the themes with 
which the poet's soul seems most readily to vibrate in 
harmonious unison. The following stanzas, which occur 
in the lines on ' Autumn ' to which I have before alluded, 
will at once illustrate these remarks :* — 

" Hail ! woods, whose ling' ring verdure Autumn spares, 
And yellow leaves upon the greensward thrown ; 
Hail ! last bright days ; the garb which Nature wears 
Bespeaks a grief harmonious with my own. 

* * * * * 
I love the autumnal hours ; when Nature dies, 

Her shrouded looks have charms unknown before ; 
Like friend's farewell, or parting smile that flies 
O'er lips which death soon seals for evermore. 

* * * * * 



* This and the five following extracts are taken from my Trans- 
lations of a few of Lamartine's best poems, published some years 
since with a small collection of other poems. 



92 LIFE AND WEITINGS 

Earth, sun, vales — beauties which in Nature meet — 
I weep to quit you for the tomb's repose ; 

So pure the daylight seems, the air so sweet, 
The sun so bright to eyes that soon shall close. 
* * * * * 

The wild flowers, as they fade, perfume the gale, 
And life and light with farewell odours greet ; 

And I too perish, and my soul exhale, 

Like dying sound, most sorrowful, most sweet." 



In his poem of ' The Lake ' too we find him breathing 
strains of sweet but sorrowful affection, and alluding 
with plaintive tenderness to Elvira — Elvira, that 
mysterious object of a real, or, possibly, an ideal love, 
who has thrown indeed a shadow, but a shadow soft 
and beautiful, over the whole of his poetic life. Side 
by side with Dante's Beatrice — with the Laura of 
Petrarch — with Leonora the beloved of Tasso — the 
Elvira of Lamartine will hereafter take her place in 
the poetry of France. In the poem just mentioned he 
alludes as follows to the night when last he sought 
together with Elvira the borders of that lake whose 
beauties his verse perpetuates : — 

" O envious Time ! alas ! that hours, when love 

Brings joy more pure than words may e'er express, 
Should in their transit not less fleeting prove 
Than hours of wretchedness ! 

Lake ! silent rocks ! grots ! woods of shadowy green ! 

Which time hath spared, or shall again renew ! 
Guard the remembrance of that night, fair scene, 

And let it live with you ! 



OF LAMARTINE. 93 

Live in the calm, and in the tempest's shocks, 
Fair lake, 'mid hills where now hright suns are shining, 

Live in those gloomy pines and unhewn rocks 
Now to thy breast inclining ! 

Live in the gales that murmur as they go, 

In all the voices of thy echoing shore ; 
In stars which on thy waters, as they flow, 

Their soft effulgence pour ! 

Let winds that moan, and waving reeds that sigh, 
And balmy gales that haunt the perfumed grove, 

Let all that meets the ear, the breath, the eye, 
Tell of our earthly love ! " 

In his poem on the * Gulf of Baise ' we find him still 
pursuing, though on a different theme, his train of 
melancholy reflections : — 

" Now night hath veil*d the boundless deep, 

And circling shades have gather'd round ; 
The shores are hid, the murmurs sleep, 

And rest prevails and calm profound. 
At this rapt hour, in thoughtful mood, 
Pale Melancholy loves to brood 

On shores where silence reigns ; 
Or seeks with meditative eyes, 
On gently-sloped acclivities, 

Yon mould ring towers and fanes. 
Liberty's ancient, sacred home wast thou, 

Fair land, where loftiest virtue dwelt of yore ! 
Unworthy Caesars trample on thee now, 

Thy throne is fall'n, thy heroes are no more !" 

In his poem entitled 'Man,' that magnificent ex- 
postulation which he addressed to his brother poet 
Byron, we find him again recurring to his favourite 
and frequent theme, an early sorrow-stricken love : — 



94 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

" One being yet was left me — one alone ; 
Together by thy hand our lives were thrown, 
And our two spirits into one had grown ; 
She from my arms was prematurely taken, 
As from its branch the unripe fruit is shaken. 
This blow, design'd to wound me to the core, 
Was slowly dealt, that I might feel it more. 
In features where with death affection waged 
Unequal strife, I saw my doom presaged : 
I saw in her last looks life's sacred light, 
Which seem'd but now in death's embrace less bright, 
With love's warm breath burn brightly as before, 
Then fondly cried : O Heaven ! one respite more ! 
E'en as the captive, 'mid the dungeon's gloom, 
And the dark horrors of his living tomb, 
Near the last torch that e'er shall blaze for him, 
Hangs o'er its light and sees the flame grow dim, 
I watch'd to seize her spirit as it parted, 
And in her latest look still sought it broken-hearted ! 
The sigh, O God ! to thy pure bosom sped, 
With which from earth my hope's last promise fled ! 
Pardon despair if then it dared blaspheme ! 
Eepentant I adore the Power supreme, 
Which made the waves to flow, the sun to burn, 
The winds to sweep, humanity to mourn." 

■* * * * * 

The opening part of this poem has been much 
admired in France, and in England has been con- 
sidered very powerful and striking by judges whose 
opinion is of great value. After a few words by way of 
introduction Lamartine addresses Byron as follows : — 

" Night is thy dwelling, Horror thy domain, 
Like thee the indignant eagle scorns the plain, 
Soars to the rocks which lift their crags to Heaven, 
By winter blanch' d, and by the thunder riven, 
Or seeks the wreck that strews the billowy shore, 
Or fields that slaughter stains with black'ning gore ; 



OF LAMARTINE. 95 

And while the bird, which sings its grief to rest, 

On flowery margin builds its tranquil nest, 

He to the horrid Athos mounts on high, 

And hangs o'er dark abyss his aery. 

Alone, 'mid limbs still tremulous with life, 

And beetling crags with blood and carnage rife, 

Cheer'd by the victims' cries that round him sweep, 

And rock'd by storms, he sinks in savage sleep. 

Like art thou to this brigand of the air, 

The strains thou lov'st are wailings of despair, 

111 is thy spectacle, thy victim man ; — - 

Thou, like the fiend, hast dared the abyss to scan, 

And far from scenes where light and Godhead dwell, 

Hast bid to hope eternally farewell." 

It would be difficult, I think, to find in any poetry 

a passage more sustained in energy or more elevated 

in feeling than that in which, at the conclusion of this 

generous expostulation, he summons Byron to a nobler 

use of those exalted faculties with which Nature had 

unsparingly endowed him : — 

" Thou, whose strains control 
Each quick vibration of the sentient soul, 
Byron, draw from it floods of harmony ! 
Genius was made Truth's minister to be. 
Oh ! if, by tears subdued, thy lute should borrow 
From thy inspiring touch the hymn of sorrow ; 
Or if, resolved from night's dark shades to spring, 
Like some fall'n angel thou should'st plume thy wing, 
And, soaring upwards, with attendant fires, 
Sit once again among the heavenly choirs ; 
Ne'er would the breathings of celestial sphere, 
Or harps, which e'en the Godhead loves to hear, 
Or voices loud, which mingling seraphs raise, 
Have gladden'd Heav'n with nobler songs of praise. 
Courage ! fall'n scion of a race divine, 
High origin adorns that brow of thine ! 



96 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

None looketh on thee, but at once must own 

Those beams, though clouded, come from Heav'n alone. 

Lord of immortal verse, awake, arise ! 

To night's dark brood leave doubt and blasphemies ; 

Spurn the false homage which corruption brings ; 

From Virtue's soil alone true glory springs. 

Kesume thy splendour, and assert thy right 

Amid that glorious progeny of light, 

Which, issuing from the breath of Heav'n above, 

Was sent on earth to sing, believe, and love ! " 

It may be interesting here, though not strictly in 

accordance with chronological arrangement, to allude 

to a poem published by Lamartine in 1825, entitled 

' The Last Canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.' 

In this poem Lamartine conducts the pilgrimage of 

Byron under the name of Harold to its close. Without 

entering at present on the merits of this poem, I shall 

refer only to one part of it, which consists of the 

following energetic apostrophe to Italy : — - 

" Farewell ! sweet Italy, thy cherish'd shore 
These disenchanted eyes behold no more ! 
Land of the past, what doth the pilgrim here ? 
When eye hath measured arch and ruin drear, 
And sought proud names inscribed on funeral urns, 
Vainly its gaze towards the living turns ! 
All sleeps, e'en memory of historic fame, 
While bygone glory prompts the blush of shame. 
All sleeps ! yet active cares the world engage — 
All else hath felt the spirit of the age. 
Scythian and Breton from their countries wild, 
By glorious name to thy fair shores beguil'd, 
Thy cities view but with contemptuous eyes, 
Nor glory's home 'mid ruins recognise. ♦ 

They turn to Temple and Triumphal Gate, 
Colossal Arch and palaces of state, 



OF LAMAETINE. 97 

And vainly and with mockery stern demand 
For whom such mighty monuments were plann'd ! 
Would Nation here some Caesar's triumph grace ? 
Or, doth its shadow fill the glorious space ? 
No more within thee shame's emotions rise, 
To barbarous insolence a smile replies. 
Of glory's star thou barterest many a ray, 
And thy own hands with dastard pride display 
The soil where heroes" footprints linger still ; 
Walls, which their names with empty echoes fill 
Marbles, which yet barbarian hands deface ; 
Proud busts, contrasted with degenerate race ; 
Superfluous fruits, which mark thy favour'd lot, 
And suns which o'er thee shine — but know thee not. 
Blush then ! yet no — the trifler's fame embrace ; 
Exult — soft strains thy Capitol disgrace. 
Faint hand no more Eome's badge of empire wields, 
To lyre and brush the iron sceptre yields ; 
The siren's art perfidious joys prolongs, 
And lends new sweetness to Armida's songs. 
Thy colours life-like o'er the canvas flow, 
Blandusian marbles 'neath thy chisel glow, 
And sculptured traits of heroes old proclaim 
Thy bygone greatness and thy present shame. 
The uncouth grandeur of thy language fails ; 
Its tuneful melody alone prevails ; 
Thy chains have sapp'd its power and accents' grave, 
Tis sweet as flattery, treacherous as .a slave, 
And like the serpent, which with sinuous coil 
Pursues the miry windings of the soil, 
It stoops, neath length en'd slavery, and lends 
The lure of beauty to the worst of ends. 
Enfeebled strains in barren accents roll 
To flatter sense and enervate the soul. 
Fall'n pile ! where Echo dwells in lonely state ! 
Dust of the past, which dry winds dissipate ! 
Ill-fated land ! where through degenerate sons 
Ancestral blood in lifeless currents runs ; 
Where man is born decrepit, and where steel 
Aims but the blows which midnight shades conceal ; 



98 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Where dark intent its veil of mystery flings 
O'er brows to which congenial shadow clings ; 
Where love is treachery, and shame pretence ; 
Where guile usurps the look of innocence ; 
Where nerveless words are but an empty sound, 
A cloud which bursts, with echoes lingering round. 
Go ! weep thy fall, thy heroes celebrate ! 
Where Glory's rays their bones resuscitate 
In other climes (forgive me, shade of Rome !), 
With men, not human dust, I seek a poet's home." 

The reflections on the degeneracy of the Italians, 
which this apostrophe contained, were so severe and 
cutting that they proved the occasion of a duel between 
the poet and Colonel Pepe, in which the former re- 
ceived a dangerous wound. The Italy of the present 
day, with Piedmont at its head, must be referred to 
in far other language. It deserves not only honour- 
able mention, but the encouragement and support of 
every country in which intelligence, and patriotism, 
and the love of liberty, can command respect and 
admiration. 

I return, however, to the ' Poetical Meditations.' The 
stanzas entitled ' The Dying Poet ' are said to have 
been written during sickness, when the poet, perhaps, 
thought that he was singing his own dirge. The lines 
on Bonaparte show in how unfavourable a light Lamar- 
tine had viewed his character. Severely indeed does 
he reproach him with the murder of the unfortunate 
Due d'Enghien : — 



OF LAMARTINE. 99 

" Thou didst grow great," he exclaims, addressing 
him, " without delight, and didst fall without a murmur ; 
beneath thy thick armour there was nothing human 
beating ; thou knewest not hate nor love, but didst live 
for thought alone. Like the eagle that reigns in the 
solitude of the sky, thou hadst but a look with which 
thou mightest measure earth, and talons with which thou 

mightest embrace it What sudden fright is 

this, and why dost thou turn aside from me thy startled 
look? Whence proceeds the paleness that is spread 
oyer thy brow ? What hast thou seen suddenly amid 
the horrors of the past? Is it the smoking ruins of 
twenty cities ? or is it some field of battle that foams 
with human blood ? All this thy glory has effaced ! 
Glory effaces everything — everything save crime. But 
his finger pointed out to me the body of a victim, a 
young man — a hero, weltering in pure blood. The 
wave which bore it kept passing and repassing, and 
ever as it passed him its avenging waters threw up to 
him the name of Conde." 

The pervading melancholy which tinges not only 
the ' Meditations,' but the entire poetry of Lamartine, 
appears to have had its source in the remembrances of 
crushed affections. The grave would seem to have 
engulfed the objects of his early love ; and here 
it may be mentioned that at later periods of his 
checkered and eventful life his domestic affections 
were doomed to undergo trials equally severe. His 
mother, whom he loved with tenderness, met her death 

f 2 



100 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

by a lamentable accident- He has paid a graceful 
tribute to her memory in the poem entitled ' A Mother's 
Tomb,' and also in some more touching, because more 
natural and simple verses, which occur in his poem 
entitled ' Jocelyn.' His only daughter, by a marriage 
of which I shall have occasion to speak presently, died 
while travelling with him in the East, but her gentle 
influence still wakes to life and beauty in the stanzas 
on the Death of Julia. We must also bear in mind, 
with reference to the pervading sadness of his song, 
the circumstances of the times in which he was born, 
and which must have formed frequently the subject of 
conversation in the domestic circle. He was rocked 
in the cradle of revolution. In the Memoirs of his 
Youth he refers to the moment at which his aged re- 
latives were hurried off in a cart, amid the hootings of 
a savage populace, and at which, as he informs us, 
persecution entered his home, never again to leave it 
till after the death of Robespierre.* 

" The populace came one night," he observes, " and 
tore from their dwelling my grandfather, notwithstand- 
ing his 84 years of age, my grandmother almost equally 
aged and infirm, my two uncles, and my three aunts, 
the nuns, who had already been driven from their con- 
vents. The whole family were thrown pellmell into 
a cart escorted by gendarmes, and were conducted, 

* Memoirs, p. 34. 



OF LAMAKTINE. 101 

amidst the hooting and savage shouts of the populace, 
to Autun. There an immense prison had been prepared 
to receive all the suspected persons of the province. 
By an exception, of the cause of which he was ignorant, 
my father was separated from the rest of the family, and 
confined in the prison of Macon. My mother, who was 
then suckling me, was left alone in my grandfather's 
immense mansion, under the surveillance of some sol- 
diers of the revolutionary army. And yet persons are 
astonished that the men whose life dates back to these 
gloomy days have imparted a tinge of sadness and an 
impress of melancholy to the literature of France. 
Virgil, Cicero, Tibullus, Horace himself, who imprinted 
this character on the genius of Eome, were they not 
born like us during the great civil wars of Rome, and 
amidst the noise of the proscriptions of Marius, of Scylla, 
and of Csesar ? Think of the impressions of terror or of 
pity which agitated the bosoms of the Eoman matrons 
whilst they carried these men in their wombs. Think 
of the milk, rendered bitter by tears, which I myself 
drew from the breast of my mother whilst our whole 
family was in captivity (a captivity which for some was 
to be ended only by death) — whilst the husband whom 
she adored was upon the steps of the scaffold — and whilst 
she was herself a captive in her deserted abode, ferocious 
soldiers playing the spy upon her tears, to charge her 
with her tenderness as a crime, and to insult her sorrow !" 

In compliance with the wishes of his family Lamar- 
tine determined to take the opportunity which the 
success of his poetical efforts afforded him of obtaining 



102 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

an honourable employment. He chose the diplomatic 
career, and was made Attache to the embassy at 
Florence. It was in Italy, where he remained some 
time as secretary of embassy at different Courts, that 
he is said, in the midst of a scene of social gaiety, to 
have heard a stranger's voice full of melody and ten- 
derness repeating the following lines, which occur in 
the poem before alluded to, entitled * Autumn :' — 

" Perchance within the future's gloom is set 
The now unhoped-for light of joy's return ; 
And some fond heart, to mine unknown as yet, 
May still with soft responsive passion hum." 

The language of the poet's soul had found its echo in 
another ; and the stranger, who was an English lady, 
subsequently became his wife. Her name was Mary 
Ann Eliza Birch. It has been remarked by Sainte 
Beuve that literary reputation, a rich inheritance, and 
a marriage in conformity with his tastes, became the 
poet's portion almost at the same time. 

The new 'Poetical Meditations,' and the poem en- 
titled ' The Death of Socrates,' appeared in 1823 ; 
' The last Canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' to 
which I have before alluded, in 1825. The ' Chant du 
Sacre,' the subject of which was the Coronation of 
Charles X., was published in the same year as the 
last-mentioned production. This poem, as originally 
published, contained some lines which displeased the 



OF LAMABTINE. 103 

Duke of Orleans, afterwards King of the French, by 
the allusion which they contained to the conduct of the 
Duke his father. On this subject a negociation is said 
to have taken place, in consequence of which Laraartine 
consented to sacrifice the lines in question. These 
verses, therefore, did not appear in the second edition, 
or rather in the second impression of the poem ; and 
almost the whole of the first impression is said to have 
been purchased of the printer, M. Tastu, that it might 
be at once destroyed. The passages thus omitted 
were as follows : — 

The archbishop, in calling upon the king to name 
the twelve peers who were to be his sureties for the 
observance of his oaths, remarks — 

" And this prince, leaning on his brilliant armour, 
who, with his eyes fixed upon this group of children, 
contemplates this hope with pride ? " The king re- 
plies, — "D'Orleans! This great name is shielded by 
the forgiveness of my brother : the son has redeemed 
his father's arms ! and, like shoots from a tree which is 
still fruitful, seven branches have concealed the wounds 
of the trunk." 

The ' Harmonies, Poetical and Religious,' were 
published in 1829. On the death of M. Daru, which 
occurred in the same year, Lamartine was chosen to 
fill the vacancy thus occasioned among the members of 
the French Academy. His reception took place on 



104 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

the 1st of April, 1830, and the illustrious Cuvier was 
appointed to receive him. In the discourse which he 
delivered, according to custom, in honour of him whom 
he succeeded, the poet made some touching allusions 
to the death of his mother, which event had happened 
only a few days before the election of her son to the 
Academy. The poetical tributes which he paid to her 
memory have been before referred to. 

It was in this year, a most eventful one for France, 
that he published his pamphlet entitled ' The Politics of 
Reason.' In the preface to his published speeches he 
refers not, he says, his friends, but his calumniators, to 
this pamphlet and to the sentiments which it contains. 
" They will see," he continues, " that I have followed 
but one course ; that conscience was my starting-point, 
and my end that progress which is possible under every 
form of government." 

Lamartine had accepted a diplomatic appointment 
conferred on him by Charles X. He was absent from 
France, and was about to start upon his mission as 
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Greece, when 
the Revolution of July, 1830, broke out. The new 
Government offered, it is said, to confirm the appoint- 
ment ; but Lamartine declined to receive it at their 
hands. It has been observed, that " after the three 
days the poet hoped, like Chateaubriand, for the alliance 
of the past and future upon the head of a child (the 



OF LAMARTINE. 105 

Duke de Bordeaux) ; but that destiny decided other- 
wise." 

" I went," he says, " at once to Paris to offer my 
resignation to the king, Louis Philippe. I sent it to 
M. Mole, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was to the 
following effect.: — ' I accept as a fact, and as founded 
in justice, the revolution which has recently taken 
place. I am ready to serve my country as a citizen in 
the Chambers, or in any unpaid elective functions. I 
have served the dynasty which has fallen, but I could 
not disguise from myself its faults. I lament its mis- 
fortunes ; but I do not wish, by remaining in the service 
of your Majesty, to appear to pass over from one govern- 
ment to another with the turn of fortune. I wish to 
take my stand upon the ground not of opposition but of 
independence.' The king read this letter in Council, 
and was not offended at it. He handed it to his son the 
Duke of Orleans, saying, ' Eead it ; this is what I call a 
resignation honourably given.' He read it himself to 
Monsieur Laffitte, who approved of its language. ' Tell 
M. de Lamartine,' added the king, turning to M. Mole, 
' to come and see me as he used to do. I shall still enter- 
tain the same kind sentiments towards him.' M. Mole 
communicated to me on the following day these parti- 
culars, and this invitation. I told M. Mole that I was 
very much touched by, and very grateful for, the king's 
remarks; but I added, 'I shall not go to Court. It 
might be imagined that I went to ask for favour, 
although I went but to refuse it. I shall therefore 
abstain from every kind of intercourse or connexion 
with the new dynasty.' " 

F 3 



106 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Having paid to great misfortunes the tribute of his 
sympathy, he frankly embraced the new order of 
things : — 

"The past," said he, "is now only a dream: it is 
allowable to regret it, but not to waste one's time in 
uselessly lamenting it. It is always permitted, it is 
always honourable, to take one's share in the misfortunes 
of another, but it is not right to take a share in a fault 
which one has not committed. I loved," he said also, 
" that ancient family of the Bourbons, because they had 
had the affection and the blood of my father and my 
relatives, and because, had they required it, they might 
have had mine too. The Bevolution of July has not, 
however, provoked me to bitterness, for it has not taken 
me by surprise. I have seen it coming from afar ; nine 
months before the fatal day, the fall of the monarchy 
was written in the names of the men to whom its conduct 
was intrusted. These men were devoted and faithful, 
but they belonged to another era and another mode of 
thinking ; while the spirit of the age was marching in 
one direction, they were marching in another : the sepa- 
ration was complete in men's minds, and could not be far 
distant in their acts ; it had become a question of days 
and hours. I have wept for this family, which seemed 
condemned to the fate and to the blindness of an CEdipus." 

The first attempts of Lamartine to obtain a seat in 
the Chamber of Deputies were unsuccessful; for th e 
electors of Dunkirk refused him as their representative. 
The unjust and bitter satire which the poet Barthelemy 



OF LAMAETINE. 107 

addressed to him on this subject, in the number of the 
'Nemesis' which appeared on the 3rd of July, 1831, 
drew from him the remarkable poem which he pub- 
lished entitled ' A Nemesis.' It was during the period 
which immediately preceded the election at Dunkirk 
that he paid a visit to England : — 

"M. de Talleyrand was at that time," he informs us, 
" the French ambassador in London. He carried with 
him thither," he continues, " the whole weight of the 
diplomacy of Europe, and constituted in himself a con- 
gress. I saw him often ; I admired him when at his 
work, and ever respected him. His life had been de- 
voted to ambition and to pleasure ; he consecrated his 
old age to the task of reconciling France and England, 
and of promoting the interests of peace. His thoughts 
on this head were identical with mine. During his 
mornings I often talked with him on the critical state 
of the world. He urged me to return to the career of 
diplomacy. I told him what my scruples were. He 
endeavoured to overcome them by state considerations, 
but I adhered to them from motives of honour." 

In 1832 Lamartine put into execution the project 
before alluded to of visiting the East. He was accom- 
panied by several persons, including his wife and his 
daughter Julia — the latter of whom died, as has been 
mentioned, during his travels. 

When in Syria he paid a visit to Lady Hester Stan- 
hope, who prophesied his future greatness. " You may 



108 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

believe what you will," said she to him, " but you are 
nevertheless one of the men whom I expected, whom 
Providence sends me, and who have a great part to 
accomplish in the work which is preparing. You will 
soon return to Europe ; Europe is worn out ; France 
alone has still a high mission to accomplish. In that 
mission you will share. I know not yet in what ca- 
pacity ; but, if you wish it, I can tell you to-night, when 
I have taken counsel of our stars." The " work which 
was to be accomplished in Europe " had long been the 
" fixed presentiment " of Lady Hester Stanhope. 

In 1833 Lamartine received in Syria the intelligence 
that he had been elected Deputy for Hondschoot and 
Bergues, in the Department of the North. He returned 
to France in the same year, and when asked by one of 
his friends, on the day before that on which he took his 
seat in the Chamber, where he should sit, he said : " On 
the ceiling." He had resolved, as he himself informs 
us, to be impartial. " The nature of my mind," he 
adds, " inclined me to take from every party the truth 
which it seemed to possess, without adopting either its 
passions, its ambition, or its mistakes. It was a thank- 
less task in a time of revolution. I resigned myself to 
it without disguising from myself the unpopularity into 
which on all sides I was sure to fall." In 1834, in the 
discussion on the address, he delivered his maiden 
speech upon the Eastern question. 



OF LAMAKTINE. 109 

In the debate which took place on the 8th of May, 
1834, on the subject of education, Lamartine alluded to 
the vast power of the press, and pointed out the neces- 
sity of providing a field for the intelligence of the public. 
He then proceeded to make the following observations 
on the shortcomings of the Revolution of July : — 

" Every revolution owes something to the people, 
and only becomes legitimate by its works. Has not the 
Revolution of July forgotten the tribute which, in its 
turn, it owes to France as well as to humanity ? Bold 
to rashness in the day of combat, timid and petty after 
victory, it hesitates to take on any vital question such 
initiatives as the age or as genius would suggest. It is 
warned by sinister catastrophes; it represses with 
energy, but it rectifies nothing, and suffers to accumu- 
late in the social system the waves of vice, corruption, 
and aggression — one of which in the end may swallow 
up itself and society together. The fearless love of 
good is wanting ; let us try to kindle it in the country." 

His speech on this occasion drew forth a reply from 
Guizot, then Minister of Public Instruction, who rose to 
repel the charges brought against the Revolution of 
July of having broken its promises and neglected the 
great moral interests of the country. At the elections 
which took place in the same year, Lamartine was re- 
turned for Bergues, and also for Macon, his native 
town. He, however, determined to sit for Bergues — a 
compliment which he considered justly due to a con- 



110 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

stituency with which he had not any local connexion, 
and whose political adoption of him had been spon- 
taneous. 

His political avocations did not cause him to abandon 
his literary pursuits. In 1 835 he gave to the world the 
account of his 'Journey in the East,' and this was fol- 
lowed in 1836 by the poem entitled ' Jocelyn/ a journal 
found in the abode of a village curate. The writer in 
the ' Gallery of Illustrious Cotemporaries,' in speaking 
of this poem, describes it as a magnificent picture of 
passion sacrificed to duty. 'Jocelyn,' as the author 
informs us, is not a poem, but an episode. It is a frag- 
mentary portion of a so-called epic, of which the subject 
is human life, and of which the poet intended, if suffi- 
ciently encouraged, to present from time to time fresh 
portions to the public. Of its projected length it is 
difficult to form a conception, as the fragment is suffi- 
ciently voluminous to terrify ordinary readers. In its 
present shape it consists of a Prologue, of nine Epochs 
with an Epilogue, and a supplemental Epilogue written 
by way of variation. It is moreover ushered in by a 
Dedication, a new Preface, an Advertisement or general 
Notice, and a Postscript. These constitute an array of 
materials which are quite alarming to an unhappy critic 
who has either to read them through, or to hazard a 
false judgment on that which he has never read. 
Another fragment of this vast epic, entitled ' The Fall 



OF LAMAETINE. Ill 

of an Angel/ has been published ; but I confess that I 
have never read it. ' Jocelyn' I could never have read 
through from beginning to end, if it had not been that 
I had promised to give a lecture on the life and writings 
of the author. It contains many passages of great 
beauty ; but as a whole I am unable to admire it. It is 
so tedious and prolix, that, when the author tells us at 
the conclusion of some one or other of its countless frag- 
ments that many pages are here wanting in the MS., 
one cannot but feel inclined to congratulate the poet 
and the literary world on the loss they have sustained. 
It is marked, too, when viewed as a whole, by poverty of 
thought and incident, which its extreme length renders 
the more obvious. Its descriptions are often very beau- 
tiful; but they are overcharged with detail, and grow 
monotonous through repetition. The similes are fre- 
quently prosaic, poor, inappropriate, and altogether 
beneath the dignity of the subject. Its tale may be 
briefly told as follows : — Jocelyn is a youth who, to 
enable his sister to marry, gives up his portion of the 
humble family property and becomes the inmate of a 
seminary. On the dispersion of the members at the 
outbreak of the Revolution, Jocelyn takes refuge in a 
cave, called the Eagle's Grotto, situate amid the Alps 
of Dauphine. Here he subsists on bread, which is 
supplied to him by a shepherd. Some time afterwards 
he sees two strangers flying from two soldiers and 



112 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

taking the direction of his cave. He points out to the 
former the natural bridge over which lies the only road 
to his hiding-place. Firelocks are discharged, the elder 
fugitive is shot, but has managed simultaneously to 
shoot his two pursuers. The younger fugitive, Laurence, 
is consigned to the care of Jocelyn, and becomes his 
constant companion and his friend. At length a violent 
storm occurs, and Jocelyn, on his return to his cave, 
misses his companion, goes in search of him, and finds 
him fallen and injured. He carries him back to his 
cave, and, on commencing to dress his wounds, discovers 
that his companion is a woman. It is needless to say 
that love succeeds to friendship ; but this gives rise to 
a severe conflict in the mind of Jocelyn between his 
affection and the obligation of celibacy incident to his 
ecclesiastical calling, and it is upon this point that the 
chief interest of the poem turns. A summons from the 
Bishop of Grenoble, who is about to die on the scaffold, 
brings matters to a crisis. Jocelyn tells the bishop the 
story of his love, and pleads with some eloquence in its 
favour. The bishop holds over him the authority of 
the Church. Jocelyn gives way, and is consecrated a 
priest ; an exciting scene ensues between Laurence and 
Jocelyn, and they part to meet only on the verge of the 
grave. Laurence goes to Paris, and is married ; but 
the marriage does not prove a happy one. She be- 
comes a widow at twenty, and gives herself up to a life 



OF LAMARTINE. 113 

of gaiety and dissipation. Jocelyn sees her accidentally 
at Paris, is grieved at her course of life, and returns 
to seek consolation in the duties of a village pastor. 
Some time afterwards he is summoned to the death-bed 
of a person who is dying in a village near at hand, 
while on her way to Italy. That person proves to be 
Laurence. Jocelyn makes himself known to her. She 
dies soon afterwards, and leaves him all her property. 
Jocelyn buries her body in the cave, the scene of their 
ill-fated love, and thither some years afterwards the 
sympathizing villagers carry the remains of Jocelyn. 
The story and its incidents are in the last degree im- 
probable, though they have been said to be almost an 
actual narrative. The poet indeed tells us in his 
' Memoirs ' that one of the misfortunes of the youth of 
the Abbe Dumont inspired him with the idea of Jocelyn. 
Subsequently, however, he says that he has described 
in Jocelyn, under the name of an imaginary person- 
age, that concentrated warmth of soul, that pious en- 
thusiasm displayed in outpourings of the thoughts, in 
aspirations and in tears of adoration before God, which 
he experienced during the burning years of youth in 
a religious establishment. 

I have spoken of the defects of ' Jocelyn :' I wish that 
time permitted me to lay before you specimens more 
numerous than I can venture to present of the beautiful 
passages which it contains. The splendours of the 



114 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Alpine landscape, with its attendant features of ava- 
lanche and storm — the disquietudes incident to a period 
of convulsion such as that of the first French Revolu- 
tion — the sense of isolation — the longings for a heart 
responsive, not unnatural under the circumstances in 
which Jocelyn, the hero of the poem, was placed — the 
endearments and affections of domestic life — the touch- 
ing traits of filial and maternal love to which the seventh 
epoch is devoted — the habits, cares, and occupations 
belonging to the life of a village pastor, — are subjects 
which Lamartine has handled in some of the passages 
with great felicity and power. It is not easy to find 
descriptive passages suited for quotation, as they are 
extended to a great length. I must, however, call your 
attention particularly to the concluding lines of a poem 
on the Rainbow, and some exquisite stanzas on the 
Nightingale. Jocelyn, having described the rainbow, 
with its varying effects of light and colour, concludes 
as follows with a graceful and tender apostrophe to his 
companion Laurence : — 

" Is it a bridge that angels tread ? 

O Thou that sufferest mortal eyes 
To see Thy wondrous works outspread ! 

Is it a pathway to the skies ? 
Loved Laurence, would that I had wings 
To mount where yonder bright arch springs, 

Its radiant heights to climb ! 
And led by angels' power divine, 
Eye fix'd on Heav'n, hand clasp'd in thine, 

To pass o'er death and time." 



OF LAMARTINE. 115 

Laurence replies with the following beautiful lines 
on the Nightingale : — 

" See ! in her nest, yon nightingale 
Broods silently with anxious joy : 
Love spreads her wings, lest cold prevail, 
And all her coming bliss destroy. 

Her neck o'erhangs, through watchfulness, 

The shell in which her hope reposes, 
And slight sounds rouse from weariness 

That beauteous eye which slumber closes. 

Her feathery down my voice hath stirr'd, 
Care for her young consumes her breast, 

We see the heart-throbs of the bird, 

Whose breathings shake her trembling nest. 

What power constrains such tender care ? 

Her mate's most tuneful minstrelsy — 
On oaken branch he sits, and there 

Pours forth his floods of melody. 

Now drop by drop the stream distils, 
Soft sighs succeed to transports strong, 

Then the green canopy he fills 
With torrents of harmonious song. 

A heart inspires him as he sings ; 

'Mid joys of sense a soul appears ; 
Now hymns of bliss to Heav'n he flings, 

Now mingles melody with tears. 

Why shares he still, that branch above, 
The languor which his strains impart ? 

His sweet voice vibrates in his love, 
And falls upon an echoing heart. 

The brooding bird his accents hears, 
And swift-wing'd hours unheeded fly ; 

The egg-shell bursts and life appears, 
All spring-tide, love, and melody. 



116 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Heav'n ! source of joy ! how fair and blest 
Life's hours which to my bosom bring 

Enough of love like her to rest, 
Enough of bliss like him to sing ! " 

I shall not quote passages in illustration of the de- 
fects to which I have alluded, as it would not, I am 
sure, afford you any pleasure to hear them. For my- 
self, too, I prefer the more congenial task of pointing 
out beauties in an author's works, and I shall conclude 
my notice of 'Jocelyn ' by quoting the following tender 
passage, touchingly descriptive of the position of a 
mother relatively to her children : — 

" In mother's heart a twofold life reposes — 
For when 'mid cares her past existence eloses, 
She sees a future full of hope and day 
Around her children's radiant foreheads play ; 
Affection seems her soul to multiply — 
Pure love ! no dregs within thy chalice lie." 

Jocelyn, 8 me Ep., p. 227. 

It was early in the year 1837 that the project of a 
law prescribing separate jurisdiction (loi de disjonction) 
in cases where citizens and soldiers should combine 
in an attempt against the security of the state, was 
presented by the ministry to the consideration of 
the Chamber. In the case of the military insurrec- 
tion at Strasburg for the purpose of setting Louis 
Napoleon on the throne of France, the jury impa- 
nelled to try the offenders had given a verdict of 
acquittal, on the ground that the ministry had with- 



OF LAMARTINE. 117 

drawn from justice the prince, who was the chief 
offender. The " loi de disjonction" was therefore 
introduced, in order that in future military offenders 
might be handed over to the councils of war, while 
civil offenders were left to be tried by ordinary tri- 
bunals. Lamartine spoke strongly in favour of the 
measure ; and the course which he took on this occa- 
sion has exposed him to many severe comments. The 
project had been powerfully attacked by M. Dupin, 
who pointed out its evils with great force and clearness. 
Lamartine maintained that an insurgent soldier who 
was guilty, in addition to a crime against the state, of 
a breach of discipline as well as a breach of trust, had 
no claim to be placed on the same footing as a mere 
insurgent citizen, whose offence was by no means 
attended with the same grave consequences to the 
country. He said that from popular revolutions 
liberty had sometimes sprung ; while military emeutes 
and revolutions had never been known to produce any- 
thing but disorder, anarchy, and servitude. He sup- 
ported the law, not as a permanent rule of action, but 
only as a momentary measure, a " coup d'etat legis- 
latif," rendered necessary by the verdict of the jury in 
the case of the Strasburg insurrection. He summed 
up, he said in conclusion, his views in these few words : 
" Popular revolutions at the last possible moment — 
military revolutions never ! " 



118 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

His dread of the military instincts of his country- 
men, and his horror of their fanatical attachment to the 
recollections of military glory, would seem to have in- 
fluenced his conduct on this occasion, 

At the elections which took place in the same year 
Lamartine was a second time returned both for Bergues* 
and Macon, but, having on a former occasion paid a 
compliment which he regarded as justly due to Bergues, 
he now determined to sit for Macon, as being his native 
town, though it had not been the first to do him 
honour. 

On the 18th March, 1838, he spoke in the Chamber 
of Deputies in favour of the entire abolition of capital 
punishments. This cause he had previously advocated 
in a poem written at a time when popular indignation 
seemed to menace the lives of the ex-ministers of 
Charles X., and also in an eloquent speech delivered 
at the Hotel de Ville in 1836, at a meeting convened 
for the consideration of that subject. 

We now approach a period of great interest in the 
political career of Lamartine, and one of critical import 
also in the varying destinies of France. The political 
inquirer, as his glance rests for a time on the ma- 
noeuvres of party, the intrigues of faction, and the ill- 
judged exercise of regal power, discerns new elements 
of danger for the state and even for monarchy itself. 
Fortunately we are not left to mere conjecture as 



OF LAMARTINE. 119 

regards the course pursued by Lamartine at the period 
to which I am referring. That period was witness 
to the formation of the different ministries in which 
M. Mole played a distinguished and leading part, and 
to that heterogeneous combination of men and parties 
which towards the middle of 1838 arrayed itself 
against and finally overthrew the last administration 
formed under his auspices. To trace in outline the 
history of that time would involve the necessity of a 
minute acquaintance with the state of parties and with 
modern politics in France, to which, unfortunately, I 
can lay no claim. I may refer those who wish for more 
information on the subject to the volumes of the 
' Annual Register' and the political and biographical 
sketch of M. Mole in Capefigue's * European Diplo- 
matists and Statesmen.' The following particulars 
are taken from the preface to the published speeches 
of Lamartine, as I am anxious, under the circum- 
stances and with reference to events so recent, to give 
the illustrious subject of these remarks the privilege of 
telling his own story, and as nearly as may be in his 
own words : — 

" The epoch of the Coalition arrived. The divers ele- 
ments of opposition were leagued together in hostility 
to M. Mole, who, in his single person, represented for a 
time with dignity and talent the constitution and peace. 
I felt indignant at such a combination, which was evi- 



120 LIFE AND WKITINGS 

dently either false or perverse, between parties which 
abhorred each other, and were united only to destroy. 
M. Guizot, M. Berryer, M. Thiers, M. Barrot, M. Du- 
faure, M. Gamier Pages, were arrayed on one side, each 
followed by his party : M. Mole fought single-handed 
against them all. I was tempted by a sense of right, 
and by the general abandonment to which the Minister 
of the Amnesty was consigned. I spoke in support of 
M. Mole. I combated the opposition with all the zeal 
of a ministerialist, or of a person influenced by some 
ambitious object. I was, however, only acting a sincere 
and independent part. 

" The 221 deputies who resisted, almost without any 
recognised organ, the distinguished talents of the Coa- 
lition, and the assaults of the journals of the day, which 
are ever on the aggressive side, invited me to share their 
struggle. 

" M. de Girardin was at that time sustaining single- 
handed, in the columns of ' The Press,' the shock which 
I had to sustain at the tribune against the whole forces 
of the opposition. The 221 deputies mentioned above 
summoned me to a meeting at the house of General 
Jacqueminot. I was cordially and honourably received. 
They offered me the presidency. I refused it. I mounted 
on a chair and gave the reasons for my refusal. 

" I said, addressing my honourable colleagues, ' I am 
with you, but I am not one of you. Like you, I am 
desirous of two things — that representative government 
should have free play, and that there should be sincerity 
even in opposition. I wish moreover to preserve the 
peace of Europe. On these points we agree ; and I am 



OF LAMARTINE. 121 

ready to oppose to the very utmost of my power false- 
hood in opposition and war in council. Conscience and 
the interests of the people are on our side, and I hope 
for a triumphant issue. On matters of domestic policy 
we entertain different opinions. You are Conservatives ; 
I a friend to progress. We shall separate on the morrow 
of that day on which we shall have vanquished the par- 
liamentary coalition. Let us then unite only condi- 
tionally and for a time. If I did not speak thus openly 
I should deceive you, and you might some day taunt me 
with having abandoned my party. I prefer telling you 
this beforehand, and frankly. Consider me an auxiliary, 
but leave me without your pale. To-morrow perhaps 
I shall have to fight against you.' These words dis- 
tressed them. They could not, however, do otherwise 
than appreciate my sincerity. My suggestion was 
adopted at once, and acted on. I carried on the struggle 
in their name side by side with M. Mole. The position 
he assumed, and the talents he displayed, raised him to 
a higher level. At first he triumphed by a small ma- 
jority, but he was afterwards beaten by a few votes. I 
was summoned to attend the ministerial council which 
met at M. Mole's residence, in order to deliberate on the 
crisis. Was it best to resign or to dissolve the Chamber 
and appeal to the country? That was the question 
asked. I did not hesitate to give an opinion ; and I can 
scarcely doubt that, had my advice been followed, the 
representative constitution would have been saved, and 
that the Eevolution would have been prevented. 

" I said to M. Mole, ' In my opinion you ought to 
resign. You ought to obey without contesting it tba 

G 



122 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

established rule of representative government. Parlia- 
ment places you in a minority; admit your defeat. 
Place victory in the hands of the Coalition — victori- 
ous for a day — and this victory will be its ruin. You 
will break it up by resigning power into its hands. 
The men who with repugnant views have just com- 
bined to vote against you — how will they combine in 
order to form a ministry ? On the morrow they will 
tear each other in pieces. The confusion which exists 
in their hearts will be revealed in their actions. Re- 
publicans, Legitimists, Doctrinaires, aspirants to power 
— to what understanding will such parties come in order 
to form a cabinet out of chaos ? Within the space of 
four-and-twenty hours the orators of these different 
parties will fall back one before the other. M. Guizot, 
M. Berryer, M. Gamier Pages, M. Thiers, M. Barrot, 
M. Dufaure, may combine for a destructive, but can 
they combine for a reconstructive purpose ? It would 
be the work of Babel over again ! These incompatible 
elements will disunite of themselves. Those who are 
aiming only at places in the ministry will be repudiated 
by those who aim at giving effect to political views and 
opinions ; while those who have only the latter object 
in view will be attacked by those who wish to clothe 
themselves with certain functions. Before a month has 
passed, the ministry which will succeed you will fall 
into contradictions and expose its weakness, will be in 
a minority, and scandalise the public. Like you, it will 
wish to dissolve the Chamber and appeal to the country. 
The country will pronounce indignantly against it ; and 
the newly-elected Chamber, by placing you in a majority, 



OF LAMAKTINE. 123 

will testify to the justice of your cause, and to the esti- 
mation in which it holds you. 

" ' If , however, on the contrary, you rebel against the 
apparent though false expression of opinion which the 
majority of yesterday pronounced against you in parlia- 
ment, the country will think that you are anxious to 
substitute the king's will for its own. In its indignation 
it will return a hostile' majority to the Chamber. The 
Crown's prerogative will be overwhelmed by a ministry 
of ambitious and designing men. This ministry, in 
order to deceive at home, will play the part of agitator 
abroad, and drive Europe to the verge of war. If it 
declares war in a bad sense, and in such a wretched 
cause as the Egyptian question, all Europe will be in 
flames, and our navy will be destroyed. 

" 'If, however, it should recede at the firing of the 
first cannon, the diplomacy of France will be degraded 
throughout the world, and our alliances will all be 
thrown into the arms of England. The Government 
will lose much of its prestige, and will be 'forced to 
humble itself in order that men may be induced to 
pardon the provocations they have received. The spirit 
of Frenchmen cannot endure shame. Feelings of bitter- 
ness will arise between the Government and the country. 
Fortuitous circumstances will fan the smouldering embers 
of discontent, and the Coalition, through your faults, 
will have produced the progeny which even now it 
threatens to produce — Revolution. It rests with you to 
avert such a catastrophe.' 

" It appeared to me that M. de.Montalivet was struck, 
and even alarmed, at the considerations which my re- 

g 2 



124 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

marks suggested. M. Mole, in a state of great anxiety, 
appeared to be looking out of the window, though evi- 
dently too much absorbed to notice anything. He 
seemed to be asking Heaven for a solution of the terrible 
problem which the crisis raised, and which I was press- 
ing on his attention. He was tapping with his finger 
against the window, like a man who is in a state of im- 
patience and hesitation. Unfortunately he no longer 
hesitated. He had made up his mind even before we 
began to deliberate. The Chamber was dissolved ; the 
ministry of 1840 was forced upon the Crown. This 
ministry raised, as I had predicted, the question of war. 
On the brink of the precipice it measured with its eye 
the depth of the abyss, and it recoiled. It was obviously 
influenced at that moment by one of those emotions of 
praiseworthy integrity which lead men to sacrifice self- 
love to conscience. 

" Although I have been almost invariably opposed to 
the policy of M. Thiers and of his friends, I thought 
that they evinced true morality of sentiment and lofty 
sacrifice of self-love in thus abdicating power which 
they could not longer retain without becoming the agi- 
tators of Europe. I had always rendered justice to the 
Writer : I now began to cherish a secret esteem for the 
Statesman. I repented having commented with too 
great severity at the tribune, and in the columns of the 
press, on the errors of the ministry of 1840. 

" The event which I had anticipated and announced 
beforehand to the 221 adherents of the reigning dynasty 
who had met at the house of General Jacqueminot at 
length occurred. When the time had come for making 






OF LAMARTINE. 125 

political recompence, the Conservatives invited me to 
attend a meeting which was held at the house of M. 
Delessert. The question which the meeting had to con- 
sider was the election of a president of the Chamber of 
Deputies. Some seven or eight speakers addressed the 
meeting. They all held the same language ; it was to 
the following purport. ' There is a person who has gra- 
tuitously fought our battles, who has sometimes saved 
us, and always done us honour. This person is M. de 
Lamartine. We owe him a brilliant recompence. "The 
time for awarding it has come. The presidency of the 
Chamber, if we conferred it on him, would be at the 
same time a token of our esteem, and an appropriate 
recognition of his services. He has however sufficient 
generosity to allow us to nominate M. Sauzet. M. 
Sauzet, it is true, has always fought against us, while 
M. de Lamartine has incurred unpopularity and has 
compromised himself in our behalf. But what matters 
it ? M. Sauzet may be useful to us. M. de Lamartine 
can render us no further service. Let us nominate M. 
Sauzet to the presidency, and let us hope that M. de 
Lamartine will forgive us.' Eeasoning so specious 
obtained universal assent. Individuals are selfish, but 
parties are more selfish still. It would seem that men 
combining in parties or in crowds associate nothing but 
their vices, never their virtues. 

" I was satisfied with what I had done, for I did not 
wish to be linked by any ties of gratitude to a party 
which my duty would soon compel me to oppose. I 
returned to my state of isolation. 

" The king twice sent for me in order to gain me over 



126 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

to his opinions in the presence of circumstances which 
for him were grave and critical. The king was a king 
able, eloquent, persuasive, and of winning familiarity in 
his address. Nothing but an imperative conviction 
could steel the soul against his graces, his powers, his 
blandishments, and the pertinacity of his language. I 
was touched by his confidence and his kindness. I re- 
sisted, bending like a reed beneath the influence of 
court favour. I was respectful, but immovable. ' What 
impression have I produced in you?' said the king, 
when the time arrived for me to take my departure. 
' Sire,' said I, ' you have astonished me, but have not 
altered my opinions.' 

" M. Guizot offered me the embassy at Vienna or 
London. He added, that, if that did not appear to me 
sufficient, the king would associate with these functions, 
already very highly recompensed, advantages of rank 
and fortune which would increase their value. He 
pressed me to accept the offer during several months. 
I was not insensible to these advances on the part of 
a statesman whose character and talents I honoured, 
although his principles and doctrines had been repugnant 
to me from childhood. I did not, however, wish for 
chains, though they were chains of gold. I remained 
poor, continuing to labour on, though for unknown ends. 
I was first a moderate, and then an energetic opponent 
of M. Guizot. The distance between us increased in 
proportion as the Government mounted up towards the 
past, and my mind, with that of the age, was going down 
towards the future." 

I have been unwilling to break the thread of this 



OF LAMAETINE. 127 

autobiographical sketch and narrative by introducing 
any details or observations of my own. I must now 
for a few moments retrace my steps, in order briefly 
to direct attention to certain incidents and publications 
belonging to the period over which the auto-biogra- 
phical sketch extends. 

The poem entitled ' The Fall of an Angel/ a further 
part of the gigantic project of which ' Jocelyn' was a 
fragment, was published in 1838 ; and was followed by 
the ' Poetic Gleanings,' which were published in 1839. 
In the letter, dated December 1, 1838, which serves 
as a preface to the latter, the poet declares himself 
impelled by a sense of duty to take a part in the 
political and social progress of his age. " Love, prayer, 
and song, in these my life hath pass'd," was his lan- 
guage in 1820 ; but in 1838, in the preface above 
alluded to, he states his conviction that " social labour 
is the daily and obligatory toil of every man who 
shares the perils and benefits of society." In some of 
the passages which follow he alludes to questions of 
social development, and asserts their superior import- 
ance when placed in comparison with those of which 
the nature is exclusively political. 

The ' Poetic Gleanings ' contain an interesting poem 
which the author has entitled * Utopia.' It was written 
in reply to a young French poet, Bouchard, who had 
addressed to Lamartine a poem on 'The Political 



128 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Future of the World,' every strophe of which ended 
as follows : — 

" Child of the Ocean, dost thou see nothing yonder ? " 

In this poem the following passages occur : — 

" The possible is a word which increases by degrees. 
Time, which flies on towards a future generation, has 
already accomplished that which I see. A single wor- 
ship is governing the world, vivified by a single love. 

$fc T$ $fc ?fc 

u War — this great suicide, this godless murder with 
its thousand arms — does not enrich with homicide these 
furrows, rendered fertile by dead bodies. Their thirst 
of death is slaked. Man has learned to consider human 
blood as sacred. It is the purple sap of life; and he 
knows that God reckons all its drops ! 

3f % yfc ?fc 

" Selfishness, narrow thought, which hates every- 
thing to adore but one, curses its senseless error, and 
seeks enjoyment in the general happiness (of mankind). 

* * * * 

" God, without any aid from us, will know how to 
accomplish his designs. Doth he ever sleep over a 
work which he has begun ? Vain man ! when he is 
waiting, why art thou so eager ? 

* * * * 

" Eesignation is the force of the just man: patience 
is his virtue. 

* * * ■ * 

" If mankind are sinking beneath the pressure of 



OF LAMARTINE. 129 

their burden, let us apply our "bruised shoulder to the 
rock which weighs them down : let us serve humanity, 
our age, our country. To live in everything is to live 
a hundred times ! It is to live in God ; it is to live 
with the immense life, which, through the progress of 
being and time, His virtue multiplies, and which is (as 

it were) the distant radiance of His divinity. 

* * * * 

" In order to think, one must stand aloof from the 
crowd ; but for action, one must mingle with it." 

In 1841 the German poet Becker published, and 
dedicated to Laruartine, a collection of poems, contain- 
ing, amongst others, the national song entitled f The 
German Rhine,' which had produced in the preceding 
winter a great sensation in the Rhine provinces, and 
had been termed the Marseillaise of Germany. 

The following is a free version of this song, with the 
omission of two or three unimportant lines : — 

" The German Ehixe. 

They shall not have it ever, the Ehine of Germany, 
Although like ravens o'er it they hover hungrily, 
"While pure and crystal waters its banks of verdure lave, 
Or one bold oar remaineth to strike its echoing wave. . 

They shall not have it ever, the fair, free, German Ehine, 
While lips with manhood glowing shall quaff its crimson wine, 
While rocks shall stand unshaken beside its eddying stream, 
While in its waves reflected its tall cathedrals gleam. 

Till bards no more are breathing their strains to freedom true, 
Till striplings bold no longer its gentle maidens woo, 
Till Hope's last champion lieth within its watery shrine, 
They shall not have it ever — the fair, free, German Ehine ! : ' 

G 3 



130 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

To this Lamartine replied with his poem entitled 
' The Marseillaise of Peace.' It is too long for quota- 
tion here, but the following passages may give a speci- 
men of its spirit : — 

" Within thy banks, fair Ehine, roll proud and free ! 
Nile of the West, whose waters empires drink ! 
And let the ambitions and the rivalry 

Of bordering nations in thy swift wave sink ! 



Let hate and discord from the world be driven ! 

Shall barriers rise our sympathies between ? 
Do boundaries divide the expanse of Heav'n ? 

Are frontier lines upon its blue vault seen ? 
Nations ! barbaric Pride's more specious name ! 

Doth Love all transit of your confines shun ? 
These banners tear ! they wave but to your shame— 
Let selfishness and hate a country claim ! 
Fraternity has none. 

Lines, oceans, rivers, now no more restrain 

The human heart's extended sympathy ; 
Congenial thoughts all narrow bounds disdain, 

The enlighten'd world aspires to Unity. 
I live wherever France with ruling mind 

And kindling genius fires the soul of youth ! 
Our climes are by our intellects design'd, 
A comrade in each thinking soul I find, 
I 've but one country — Truth ! " 

This poem was too pacific in its tone for some 
of the more excitable of Lamartine' s countrymen ; 
and one of them, M. Edgar Quinet, addressed to 
him in the same year a poem extremely warlike in 
its spirit. 



OF LAMAETINE. 131 

"THE RHINE. 
"To M. DE Lamartine. 

" How great will be tlieir triumph, at the meekness 
of thy elegy ! How the echo of Leipsic will laugh to 
scorn our fear ! Already thy golden strain transformed 
by orgies comes back like a ball to pierce my heart. 

■3R" $fr $£ *5p 

" When this people shall feel thirst, where shall we 
quench it ? You think of conducting us to the country 
of the palm-trees ! Our God does not wish that we 
should be led away to exile. 

"While you were singing, and almost leading us 
astray, I saw his sword gleam with anger at his side, 
and France was sharpening its edge." 

■$(£ $f "3$? Tj? 

" Cause us," the poet adds subsequently, " to enter 
with joy upon our ancient heritage : let us go to revisit 
our Jordan " (Allons revoir notre Jourdain). 

On this subject, also, the French poet M. Alfred de 

Musset addressed to M. Becker a poem which he is 

said to have improvised before a literary circle. Each 

stanza begins, — 

" Nous l'avons en, voire Ehin Allemand." 
(We've had it once, your German Rhine.) 

The following is a translation of a portion of the 
poem : — 

" We've had it once, your German Rhine. What 



132 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

was your German virtue doing when our all-powerful 
Csesar was covering your plains with his shadow? 
Where did then the last bone [you speak of] fall?" 

The words of M. Becker's song were — 

" Bis seine Fluth begraben des letzten Mann's gebein." 
(Until its waves have buried the bone of its last defender.) 

" We've had it once, your German Ehine. If you have 
forgotten the history of your country, your daughters 
will, doubtless, have preserved a better recollection of 
us, as they poured out for us your delicate white wine. 

* * * * 

" How many ravens did you muster against the 
expiring eagle on the day of carnage ? 

" Let it flow in peace, your German Ehine, and let 
your Gothic cathedrals be reflected, modestly, in its 
wave. But take care lest your Bacchanalian melodies 
should awaken the dead from their ensanguined rest." 

On the question of the election of a president for the 
Chamber in 1842, alluded to by Lamartine in the 
sketch which I have placed before you, the Conserva- 
tive party were divided. Those who constituted what 
was termed the " Centre pur " put forward M. Sauzet ; 
while Lamartine was put in nomination by those who 
were termed Conservative Reformers. The ministry, 
which, it is said, was desirous of securing the support 
of MM. Passy and Dufaure, the political friends of 
M. Sauzet, used its influence in favour of the latter, 



OF LAMAETINE. 133 

who was elected. The numbers were — for Sauzet, 193 ; 
for Lamartine, 64 ; for Odillon Barrot, 45. 

Lamartine did not, however, quit the ranks of the 
Conservatives, though his confidence in them appears 
to have been shaken when he saw the aversion and 
distrust with which his views of progress were regarded. 
On the proposition made by M. Gauneron shortly 
afterwards, with reference to the presence of placemen 
in the Chamber (sur les incompatibilites), Lamartine 
spoke with great eloquence and power. He frankly 
acknowledged the evil which was complained of, but 
thought it one which legislation could not altogether 
obviate. He thought that the remedy must rest with 
public opinion, and held that the electors could most 
fitly themselves decide whether or not a placeman in 
the Chamber faithfully discharged his duties as a repre- 
sentative. After paying a high compliment to the 
memory of Royer Collard, whose disappearance, he 
said, had abandoned society to the disordered move- 
ment of individualism and eternal change, he proceeded 
to make the following remarks on the general political 
state of France : — 

" You have nothing whatever to counterbalance those 
violent shiftings of opinion which in a country of enthu- 
siasm and impulse so often involve both men and insti- 
tutions in one common ruin ; and yet you regard it as 
a great misfortune that the protection of a few general 



134 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

interests of localities should furnish you with somewhat 
of the counterpoise you want, and place a little ballast 
(forgive me the expression) in a ship which carries too 
much sail, which rocks with every gust, and is upset so 
frequently ! " 

In the discussion which subsequently arose in the 
Chamber on electoral reform, Lamartine, in one of his 
most remarkable speeches, announced his devotion to 
the cause of conservative and rational, but at the same 
time unceasing, progress. He alluded, in language 
most forcible and eloquent, to those well-intentioned 
but short-sighted politicians, who refused to examine 
any measure of change, though good in itself, and in- 
troduced after long and mature deliberation. 

" Such men," he said, " see only one evil for them- 
selves, one danger for the institutions of the country, 
and that is progress. It is to no purpose that you 
have fought in concert with them, and aided them in 
crushing faction. You may, perhaps, have won from 
them esteem ; but the moment you propose to them a 
measure of innovation, most prudent, most wise, and, 
as you think, advantageous to the conservative spirit 
of the government, — from that very moment you are 
looked upon as an enemy." 

The following passage in this speech contains an 
expression well known and frequently alluded to in 
France: — "They would have you believe that the 



OF LAMARTINE. 135 

genius of politicians consists but in seizing a position 
which chance or revolution has assigned to them, and 
standing there immovable, inert, implacable — yes, im- 
placable opponents to all projected amelioration. And 
yet, if the genius of a statesman charged with the 
direction of a government consisted in that, and in that 
alone, there would then be no need of any statesman 
— a common signpost would suffice." It is stated in 
the report from which these passages are translated 
that long and general excitement followed the delivery 
of these words. 

In 1843, in the discussion on the address, Lamartine 
declared that his connexion with the Conservative party 
was at an end. He said that it would thenceforward 
be his aim to organize an active opposition ; and that 
it was the wish, both of himself and of those with whom 
he should in future act, to become the Whigs of the 
Revolution of July — the Whigs of modern democracy, 
and of the progress of human liberty and intelligence 
throughout the world. 

This secession, which the Conservative party had 
soon ample reason to regret, was a step which could 
hardly have been matter of surprise to those who were 
acquainted with the sentiments he had expressed in his 
speech on electoral reform. Its occurrence, however, 
so soon after his defeat as a candidate for the Pre- 



136 ' LIFE AND WRITINGS 

sidency of the Chamber, gave his enemies a pretext for 
proclaiming it the result of mortified ambition. 

In the discussion which took place in the same year 
with reference to the reduction of the tax on salt, 
Lamartine appeared at the tribune, and was received 
with unequivocal marks of interest and attention. He 
admitted the advantage of taxes to which the people 
were accustomed, as well as the exceeding difficulty of 
substituting one tax for another. He said that the 
position that those were the best taxes which fell upon 
the largest masses was true only upon this supposition 
— that the taxes themselves were just and equal in 
their pressure. Taxes were of two kinds, moral and 
immoral ; and nothing had been proved with reference 
to a tax, until it had been shown to be a just one. You 
might fill your treasury with millions, but, if the impost 
was one which pressed most heavily upon the suffering 
classes and their most vital wants, you would fill it at 
the same time with murmurs of discontent, with popular 
privations, with party recriminations, as well as with 
that social disaffection of which it was the duty of 
prudent legislation to disencumber the basis of institu- 
tions, the basis of its financial system, the basis of 
the state itself. He said that salt was consumed in 
the greatest quantities by the poor, and as it was, 
physiologically speaking, a constituent element of the 



OF LAMARTINE. 137 

human body, the tax upon it pressed not only upon 
misery, but on life and human organization, and was 
in effect a tax upon the blood and nerves of man. He 
passed a glowing eulogium on the principles which had 
governed the legislation of England on the subject ; 
and it is interesting to follow the terms in which one 
who took so prominent a part in the revolution of 
which his country was a few years since the theatre, 
could instance the attention which had been shown in 
England to the wants of the suffering masses of the 
people. 

One part of this speech was very fanciful and curious. 
" Salt," said the orator, " is in France not merely a 
taxable commodity ; salt is an idea — an idea of justice, 
of liberty and equality." Movements of surprise and 
interruption followed the delivery of these words ; but 
the speaker continued : — " Yes, gentlemen, salt is an 
idea ; and the proof of it is this, that it has figured in 
the programme of all parties who since the origin of 
the representative system have disputed at this tribune 
the possession of power, and of that by which power is 
or ought to be conferred, true and honourable and 
serious popularity." 

In conclusion, he alluded with tact and eloquence to 
the difficulties of the position of the minister of finance, 
as contrasted with his feelings in reference to this 
subject. " It was clear," he said, " to me, that, beneath 



138 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

his official language, another language struggled for 
utterance in his soul ; that beneath the stern opinion of 
the minister there dwelt the kind feeling of the bene- 
volent individual ready to throw openhanded to the 
country the boon which we so earnestly desire." He 
said it could hardly be expected that the minister 
should incur the responsibility of a possible deficit in 
the exchequer, which could not easily be filled up. 
That responsibility was one which he thought that the 
Chamber should take upon itself. They could not, he 
said, at the expiration of a session, carry with them to 
the presence of their constituents any burthen so light, 
so glorious, and so grateful as the responsibility of a 
benefit conferred. 

The delivery of these words was followed by 
unanimous and reiterated marks of approbation from 
all parts of the Chamber. 

In an article in the ' Quarterly Review ' for March, 
1848, the attention of the public is called to a curious 
prophecy contained in a small work which is stated 
by the reviewer to have been published by Lamartine 
anonymously in 1843, and with his name affixed in 
December 1847. The work thus erroneously attri- 
buted to Lamartine is styled ' Le Hachych,' and is 
the production of Monsieur Lallemand, the author of a 
work on political education. The mistake of the re- 
viewer is said to have originated in the circumstance 



OF LAMARTINE. 139 

that the work, which had been attributed to Lamartine, 
was sent over from France, and sold with a false title- 
page printed and added to it in this country, which 
gave the name of Lamartine as its author. The 
prophecy and the article in the Review are deserving 
of perusal and attention. It is, however, but common 
justice to Lamartine to observe that the facts last men- 
tioned completely negative the reviewer's inference, so 
far as it was drawn from the assumed authorship of the 
work in question, of Lamar tine's " early, connexion 
with the Republican conspiracy." 

Previously to the publication of his ' History of the 
Girondins,' which appeared in 1847, Lamartine, with 
the exception of certain articles which he had con- 
tributed to the 'Bien Public' of Macon, had not 
written much in prose. It had, however, been re- 
marked by Sainte Beuve, that his address on being 
received a member of the Academy ; his pamphlet 
entitled ' The Politics of Reason,' published previously 
to his departure for the East ; an Essay on the Civil 
Duties of Curate, published in 1831 ; and an Address 
to the Academy of Macon, were sufficient to prove that 
he was perfectly at home in that department of com- 
position. 

The * History of the Girondins ' is a work of such 
importance, and embraces subject-matter of such variety 
and extent, that a notice proportioned to its interest. 



140 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

would exceed the limits of a lecture. I must ask you 
to bear in mind that the publication of this history, 
and the delivery and publication of the remarkable 
speech and letters to which I shall presently invite your 
attention, preceded by a few months only the French 
Revolution which broke out in February, 1848. How 
far that Revolution was the work of Lamartine, who 
figured for a time as its presiding genius, I must leave 
it to my audience to determine. A writer in the * Edin- 
burgh Review ' for January, 1848, observes that " the 
heart of Lamartine is with the Revolution* through- 
out all its phases ;" that, " while he marks and con- 
demns its crimes and excesses with strict justice, his 
master-feelings are, a deep conviction of its paramount 
necessity and rectitude, and a patriotic pride in its 
triumph o'ver domestic as well as foreign foes ;" that, 
" far from branding the Revolution with a general 
character of irreligion, on account of the excesses of 
the mob, or of some few crazy fanatics of infidelity, he 
is rather disposed to regard the whole movement as one 
of a religious nature, having its origin in a deep, dim, 
but sincere determination to realize the spirit of Christ- 
ianity in the arrangements of society and the institu- 
tions of government." 

The history opens with an interesting sketch of the 
life and character of Mirabeau. " But for him," says 
* That is the first French Revolution. 



OF LAMAETINE. 141 

the historian, " the Revolution would, perhaps, have 
remained in the state of an undeveloped idea and ten- 
dency. He was not its original author, but became its 
living manifestation ; and his words, which found an 
echo everywhere, became its proverbs." 

Louis XVI., with his beautiful and cruelly calumni- 
ated queen, are afterwards brought before the reader, 
and their lives and characters are touched upon with 
exquisite feeling, taste, and felicity of expression. 
One passage relating to the former is particularly 
worthy of remark. " When one places oneself," says the 
historian, " in the position of Louis XVI., and asks 
oneself what counsels could have saved him, one is 
reduced in the end to this sorrowful answer — None ! " 

" His death," says the historian, in a subsequent 
part of his work, " alienated from the French cause 
that immense portion of every people which judge 
events only through the heart. Human nature," he 
adds, " is merciful. The Republic forgot that it gave 
to royalty the character of martyrdom — to liberty that 
of vengeance. It thus prepared a reaction against the 
republican cause, and arrayed on the side of royalty 
the sensibility, the interest, the tears, of a portion of 
every people. It is republicans who should most de- 
plore this blood, for it is their cause that it has stained, 
and it is that blood which has cost them the republic." 

In his sketch of Marie Antoinette, Lamartine gives 



142 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

her character as a woman and as a. queen ; and, speak- 
ing of her in her latter capacity, he observes, " Her 
apartments were a focus in which a conspiracy was con- 
stantly going on against the government. The nation 
discovered this at last, and she became the object of its 
hatred. The people looked upon her name as the 
phantom of the counter-revolution. That which men 
fear they are ready to calumniate. She was repre- 
sented as another Messalina. The most infamous 
pamphlets were circulated, the most scandalous anec- 
dotes believed. There may have been ground to accuse 
her of tender weaknesses ; there is nothing to prove 
that she was depraved. Young and beautiful, and 
surrounded by those of whom she was the idol, if her 
heart did not remain insensible, her feelings, veiled in 
mystery, but, perhaps, at the same time innocent, 
never, at all events, broke out into open scandal. His- 
tory has limits which delicacy assigns — those limits we 
will never violate." 

The comparatively favourable estimate of Robes- 
pierre, who is termed by Lamartine " the Luther of 
Politics," has caused very general astonishment. Most 
men have from childhood been accustomed to regard 
that personage as a type of the most revolting blood- 
thirstiness, of hateful tyranny, and despicable cow- 
ardice. In the work of Lamartine, however, he is 
made the centre of attraction. " On him," says the 



OF LAMART1NE. 143 

reviewer before-mentioned, " the reader's attention is 
gradually concentrated more and more, as on the living 
emblem of the revolution, of its principle, of its energy, 
of its moral grandeur, and of the excesses by which 
that grandeur was chequered; and with his fall the 
narrative ends, as with the cessation of all that could 
give an interest in its story." " It is impossible," he 
continues, " to rise from a perusal of Lamartine's book 
without a somewhat changed opinion of Robespierre. 
There is no vindication of his acts. No attempt is 
made to mitigate our horror at the crimes of which he 
is reputed guilty — none to justify massacre on the plea 
of public necessity or of righteous zeal. Lamartine's 
aim is to analyze the motives that actuated Robespierre, 
as w r ell as to determine what was really his share in the 
atrocities which were perpetrated in his name. Per- 
haps he does this with some partiality. He has con- 
ceived an ideal framework of Robespierre's character, 
and fills it up by attributing to him particular acts or 
intentions of clemency, for which he has often little and 
sometimes no warranty. Still on the whole his explana- 
tion of this strange character is satisfactory. Historic 
truth and a knowledge of human nature gain by re- 
ducing the distorted and exaggerated traits of the 
monster into the features of a man actuated by the ordi- 
nary passions of humanity, gifted with many noble and 
even amiable qualities, and plunged into eternal infamy 



144 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

by common human weaknesses, tried in fearful times by 
most extraordinary emergencies." 

Lamartine considers the close of the Reign of Terror 
to have been not consequent upon, but coincident with, 
the death of Robespierre. " His death," he says, " was 
the date, and not the cause, of the cessation of the 
[reign of] terror. Punishments would have been put a 
stop to by his triumph, as they were put a stop to by 
his doom. Divine justice in this way brought dishonour 
on his repentance, and misfortune on his good inten- 
tions. It made of his tomb a sealed abyss, and of his 
memory an enigma of which history shudders to offer 
the key-word — fearing to act unjustly if she should say 
' crime,' and to excite abhorrence if she should write 
6 virtue.' " 

In speaking of the massacres of September, he ob- 
serves that " Nations may march through blood unsul- 
lied, if they march towards the conquest of their rights, 
towards justice and the liberty of the world. But it 
must be through blood which is shed on the field of 
battle, not that which is spilled in the cold and sys- 
tematic massacre of the conquered. A revolution which 
remained inflexibly pure would win over the world to its 
ideas. St. Bartholomew did more harm to Catholicism 
than would have been done by the blood of a million 
Catholics. The days of September were the St. Bar- 
tholomew of Liberty. Machiavelli would have ad- 



OF LAMAETINE. 145 

vised them, and Fenelon would have branded them 
with eternal infamy. There is better policy in one 
virtue of Fenelon than in all the maxims of Machia- 
velli. The greatest statesmen of revolutions sometimes 
become their martyrs, but they never consent to become 
their executioners." 

An interesting character is given in this work of the 
Duke de Chartres, afterwards king of the French. 
The historian speaks of him as having had no youth, 
" since youth, in the case of the pupils of Madame de 
Genlis, had been suppressed by education." A curious 
anecdote is told of what took place in an interview 
between the Duke and Danton. The former, in speak- 
ing of the September massacres, declared "that the 
army regarded with abhorrence blood shed elsewhere 
than on the field of battle, and that the assassinations 
of September appeared to him to bring dishonour upon 
Liberty." "You are too young to judge of these 
events," replied Danton ; " to understand them you 
must have been in our position. The country was 
menaced, and there was no one to defend it; the 
enemy was advancing, and was about to overwhelm us : 
we were obliged to throw a river of blood between the 
tyrants and ourselves. Keep silence for the future. 
Return to the army, fight bravely, but be not idly pro- 
digal of life ; you have many years before you. France 
has no affection for the republic — she has the habits, 

H 



146 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

the weaknesses, and the wants of a monarchy ; when our 
storms have ceased she will be carried back to monarchy, 
either by her faults or her necessities; you will be 
king. Farewell, young man! Remember Danton's 
prophecy ! " 

In the * History of the Girondins ' there is one defect 
which is certainly much to be regretted. Statements 
on matters of history, at variance with received opinions, 
are left wholly unsupported by those references and 
proofs (what the French call pieces justificatives) which 
their novelty and boldness peculiarly require. They 
may be — they probably are — true : History, however, 
demands not truth alone, but truth so fenced round by 
proofs and facts drawn from pure sources as to obviate 
even the possibility of suspicion. 

But whatever may be wanting in an historical point 
of view to the completeness of the work in question, it 
created in France, and indeed throughout the whole of 
Europe, a sensation of no ordinary kind. The brilliancy 
of its style and the energy of its descriptions are 
eminently calculated to fascinate the understanding, 
and call into action all the sympathies of the heart. 
As a powerful resuscitation of the era which it com- 
prises, it is certainly without a rival. Many surviving 
witnesses of that momentous epoch have said that, while 
they dwelt with breathless interest on its pages, their 
blood, chilled by years, resumed its early glow, and 



OF LAMAETINE. 147 

that they were themselves carried back as in a dream 
to the animated scenes and startling incidents of their 
youth. The revolution was brought home to their 
feelings and recollections, not as a shade or dying echo of 
the past, but as a great, a living, and a terrible reality. 
At Macon, the birthplace of the historian, he was 
invited to a sumptuous entertainment, which was given 
to celebrate the publication of his work. The banquet 
took place on the 18th of July, 1847, and forms one of 
the great epochs in his life. The characters of author 
and politician are in him so intimately blended, that 
the banquet, which was offered as a tribute to his 
genius, assumed at the same time the aspect and 
importance of a great political demonstration. Deputa- 
tions attended from the communes of Lyons, Chalons, 
B.ourg, Autun, Cluny, and Macon. The number of 
subscribers amounted to about 2000, and more than 
twice that number were assembled as lookers-on. At 
four o'clock, as the banquet was on the point of com- 
mencing, a violent thunderstorm occurred, and threatened 
destruction to the edifice in which the entertainment had 
been prepared. A large majority, however, of the 
assembled guests remained, and, notwithstanding the 
interruptions of the storm, chanted in an impressive 
manner the concluding part of the Marseillaise. 
. When the storm had subsided, M. Holland, mayor 
of Macon and president of the banquet, addressed a 

h 2 



148 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

congratulatory speech to Lamartine as the historian of 
the Girondins. He told him of the pride with which 
Macon had regarded the triumphs of his genius — a 
pride in which France, as represented there by nume- 
rous deputations, seemed cordially to participate. He 
paid a high compliment to the eloquence of their guest, 
and offered, in the name of every one then present, a 
tribute to his austere political integrity, which, he said, 
gave them strength by the vigour of its example. He 
thanked him in the name of France " for having dis- 
entangled from faults belonging to the time, from the 
errors of individuals, and the crimes of faction, those 
principles of the French Revolution which were, in 
themselves, pure, and holy, and immortal. France, 
thanks to you," he said, " will never again forget the 
value of Liberty, of Equality, of Peace, of the progress 
of the human race in the paths of social amelioration ; 
she will never again forget how anarchy impedes and 
cruelty annihilates that progress." . ..." It is public 
opinion which you have clothed with armour, and 
public opinion will bear in mind that gift." . . . , " If 
sometimes it grieves us to see that you are left in a 
courageous minority in the councils of your country, 
we tell you that, at all events, throughout the whole of 
France, there is, in public opinion, a majority in your 
favour." .... He gave as a toast, "The Historian of 
the Girondins." 



OP LAMARTINE. 149 

The passages selected from the speech of M. Rolland 
have been quoted as showing the opinions entertained 
by a large and important body of Lamartine's country- 
men on the political import and bearing of his history. 

It is impossible within the limits of the present lecture 
to do justice to the speech delivered by Lamartine in 
reply. In the report which is given of it in the ' Presse ' 
it occupies nearly seven closely-printed columns. What 
follows may serve as a specimen of its general purport. 

He said that by remaining in their places, undisturbed 
by the thunder, the lightning, and the storm, they had 
proved themselves to be in truth the children of those 
Gauls who exclaimed, on an occasion more serious than 
the present, " that, if the vault of heaven should tumble 
down, they would support it on the iron of their 
lances." His book, he said, stood in need of a con- 
clusion, and had now received one at their hands. The 
conclusion was, that France had at once felt the necessity 
of examining more minutely the spirit of her Revolu- 
tion, — of imbuing herself more with its principles, when 
those principles had been purified and disengaged from 
the excesses and blood which had polluted them, — and, 
finally, of drawing from her past experience such 
lessons as might serve both her present and future 
need. 

He said that, from the dawn, of his political intelli- 
gence, he had frequently asked himself this question : 



150 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

" What does the French Revolution mean ? Was it, 
as the worshippers of the past declare, a mere popular 
sedition on an extensive scale? Popular seditions, 
however, leave behind them nothing but ruins and dead 
bodies. The French Revolution, it is true, left these, 
but it also left behind it something in addition — a 
doctrine and a spirit which will last as long as human 
reason shall endure !" 

" Was it," I asked myself again, " the mere result of 
embarrassment in the finances ? What ! is it possible 
that this could be the remedy devised by a country 
with such resources as France possessed, in order to 
obviate, at such a cost of life and treasure, a miserable 
deficit of 50 or 60 millions ? No ; let us abandon 
these puerile suggestions to those who, in their passion 
for financial calculations, have thought that an old 
world's fall and a new world's rise were matters which 
mere figures could determine ! The Revolution, " he 
said, " was the advent of a new idea, or of a group 
of new ideas, into the world. Their first catechists 
were Fenelon, in his ' Telemachus ; ' Montesquieu, in 
his ' Spirit of Laws ;' and Rousseau, in his ' Social 
Contract.' From them sprang that longing for total 
renovation which soon so extensively influenced the 
human heart." 

He said that time would not allow him to go through, 
as he had wished, the different phases of the Revolu- 



OF LAMARTINE. 151 

tion. He glanced at the period in which it had become 
the prey of an ambitious soldier, whose services to 
France he was willing to admit, and in whom, he said, 
he recognised the sublime but erring genius of the 
counter-revolution. 

" The Restoration had deviated less than its pre- 
decessor from the liberal ideas of '89 ; but," he added, 
" it is more easy (in politics) to vanquish one's enemies 
than to triumph over one's friends. You have a proof 
of it yourselves at the present time ! The Restoration, 
hurried on by the exaggerations of its friends, fell into 
the abyss of its own past." 

In alluding to the actual state of France, he said 
that they were indebted to the government for having 
preserved peace ; their conduct in which respect might 
one day entitle them to claim an amnesty for their 
other errors. War was but murder on an extensive 
scale ; and murder, on whatever scale committed, could 
not deserve the name of progress. 

He afterwards attacked the whole elective system as 
resting upon mere materialism. The object of reason, 
and also of the Revolution, was to make that system 
more spiritual in its nature. They counted souls, and 
not centimes. 

Lamartine then alluded to the laws of September — 
the fortifications of Paris — the laws which had been 
passed with reference to the regency — and observed on 



152 LIFE AND WEITINGS 

the entire dependence of one of the Chambers on the 
Crown. Having stigmatised the official and other cor- 
ruption, which then so extensively prevailed, he declared 
that a monarchy surrounded by such attributes might 
one day deceive even itself, and come in the end to 
mistake its own will for the will of the nation constitu- 
tionally expressed. These words, I must remind you, 
were uttered, as it were, upon the eve of the Revolution 
of 1848. He said, that in minds the most tranquil 
there now existed dark misgivings ; that for some time 
past low whispers had been exchanged ; that one citizen 
approached another with disquietude ; that every one 
had a cloud upon his brow. " Let statesmen," he 
added, "be on their guard : from these clouds there 
sometimes issue lightnings and sometimes storms." 
" What solution," he exclaimed, " will be found for 
this enigma? Will it be a new revo- 
lution, not indeed of reason, but of madness, — the 
fierce overflowing of an irritated democracy upturning 
the foundations on which society reposes — Family — 
Property — the State ? Or will it be a kind of gradual 

decay — a sort of Capua of the Revolution ? " 

" You ask me," he subsequently observed, " what is 
that moral force by which the government will be 
compelled to obey the nation's will ? I will tell you ; 
it is the sovereignty of ideas! the republic of in- 
telligence ! It is, in a word — opinion ! Gentlemen, 



OP LAMARTINE. 1 53 

opinion had its birth upon the day on which Gutten- 
berg, whom I have elsewhere termed the mechanist of 
a new world, invented, by means of printing, a plan for 
the multiplication and interchange, without assignable 
limits, of human thought and reason ! " 

In conclusion he proposed to them a toast — " The 
regular, progressive, and at the same time unceasing, 
triumph of human reason ! — the triumph of human 
reason in ideas, in institutions, in laws, and in the 
rights of all — 'in the independence of modes of worship, 
in education, in literature, in the essence, as well as in 
the forms, of government." 

It is needless to add that this speech was received 
with the utmost enthusiasm by those to whom it was 
addressed. 

On the 24th of August in the same year Lamartine 
was present at a public meeting of the Free Trade 
Association at Marseilles. He rose, when several 
speakers had already addressed the meeting, and said, 
after a few introductory observations, that he appeared 
as a witness to render testimony, and not as an orator 
to convince or teach. " I shall," he continued, " con- 
tent myself with stating what are the chief considera- 
tions which influenced at an early period my mind and 
heart in favour of your theories. Yes, my heart also — 
my heart more particularly ; for before examination 
had made liberty of labour and exchange a conviction 

' h 3 



154 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

of my reason, Nature had made it a sentiment of my 
heart." He then alluded to that language of Provi- 
dence, so much at variance with the language which 
man had chosen to employ — that language which 
ordains to us life at a cheap rate. " Yes," said he, 
" that is the language of Providence and of Nature ; 
man only has been able to arrest it on their lips in 
order to substitute a language of his own — the lan- 
guage of nakedness and hunger. Man's language is, 
6 Let us make life dear ! ' Let us make life dear — and 
how ? By prescribing to nations abstinences and com- 
pulsory fasts, side by side with the wealth, either natural 
or manufactured, with which they abound to overflow- 
ing. Let us place, it has been said, upon the frontiers 
of nations, armies which are paid by the money of the 
people, and are solely employed in intercepting and 
rendering scarce aliments, metals, utensils, fruits, and 
even the raw materials of labour, in order that all may 
suffer from the unemployed wealth of each, and groan, 
not under misery, but under general prosperity ! 

" I speak here of customs, gentlemen ; but let it be 
understood, I speak of customs when used as an in- 
strument of arbitrary prohibitions and privileges for 
certain industries, imposing a tax upon some to favour 
others ; and by no means of customs when regarded as 
an impost, natural, moderate, and useful to the state in 
its collective character. 



OF LAMARTINE. 155 

" Yes ; I affirm that the system of prohibition, or 
protection, is such a falsehood in the eyes of God and 
man, that it has made the fertility of nature, the diver- 
sity of products, the liberality of Providence, a scourge 
in the opinions of the economists. " 

After referring to that " enormous, confused, irra- 
tional volume," which was called the Tariff of French 
Customs, he said : " I asked myself, as I turned over the 
leaves of this code of our voluntary misfortunes, ' Is it 
possible that this can be the law of God ? Is it pos- 
sible that this can be the gospel of true protection and 
charity for the masses of the people ? ' No ! it is the 
code of selfishness ! It is the book of gold and of mo- 
nopoly ! It is the gospel of social falsehood, and of the 
blind cupidity of the insatiable producer against the in- 
digent consumer." 

He then proceeded, in a fair and candid manner, to 
state the necessity of treating with respect those inte- 
rests which had grown up under the protection of exist- 
ing laws. He said that they ought to call upon the 
government, not to overthrow a system in a day, but 
gradually to bring the rights and interests of the pro- 
ducer, as well as of the consumer, to that state of per- 
fect justice and freedom, " towards which," he continued, 
" we ought to march with a step as slow as is consistent 
with human weakness, and with that backwardness by 
which great national movements are characterised ; but 



156 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

towards which we must march from this day forth, 
march constantly, march with resolution and with firm- 
ness — not as men intoxicated with a novel theory, and 
bent on applying it at random, but as statesmen who 
weigh all interests in their hands, in order to give to 
each its due, and who will neither consent to sacrifice, 
on the one hand, truth to time, nor, on the other, time 
to truth." 

It may be interesting here, although not strictly in 
accordance with the principle of chronological arrange- 
ment, to quote one or two passages from a speech which 
had been delivered by Lamartine in an adjourned de- 
bate, resumed in the Chamber of Deputies, in the sitting 
of the 23rd of February, 1846, on the proposition of 
M. Desmousseaux de Givre with reference to the duties 
to be levied on the introduction of cattle into towns. 
Lamartine, in the course of his reply to M. Berryer, 
alluded to the free-trade measures of Sir Robert Peel, 
who had, he said, brought about " the Revolution of 
cheapness " (la Revolution du bon marche). " Yes/' 
he added, " the Revolution of food ; the Revolution of 
cheapness for his country ; the most useful, the most 
productive of revolutions, and one which does not 
cause human tears or blood to flow." 

He confirmed the declaration which Sir Robert Peel 
had made, that in England and other countries the in- 
crease in the production of cattle had not kept pace 



OF LAMAHTIKE. 157 

with the increase of population. He stigmatised the 
selfish axiom, so frequently repeated at the tribune, of 
" Chacun pour soi, chacun chez soi " (Let every man 
remain at home and take care of himself). 

*' We are told," he observed in conclusion, " that 
political economy is a science of figures, and must be 
kept apart from feeling. No ! " he said ; " political 
economy has a soul, and must feel for the masses of the 
people, of whose well-being or misery it is itself the 
instrument. I tell you that political economy has a 
soul, and must, as I have elsewhere observed, have its 
morality. The diminution of the price of provisions 
for the people constitutes the virtue of this science ; 
the systematic augmentation of prices is its crime." 

In October, 1847, Lamartine published in the c Bien 
Public ' of Macon a letter containing a programme of 
his views upon matters of domestic policy, as well as of 
the reforms which he demanded. Of these the follow- 
ing is a summary : — 

" Sovereignty exercised by the people ; 

Electoral rights extended to all citizens ; 

Primary assemblies nominating electors for a tem- 
porary function ; 

Electors nominating representatives for a limited 
period ; 

Representatives not abandoned to the corruptions of 
ministers, but paid by the people, in order to remove 
every pretext for servility. 



158 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

Functionaries at their posts, and not in the Chambers, 
where they play two parts quite incompatible — that of 
persons controlling and persons controlled ; 

A National Assembly ; 

Ministers named by ballot by the majority ; 

The dynasty without any other privilege than the 
throne ; 

The king inviolable ; 

The princes simple citizens ; 

A real liberty of worship, by the separation of church 
from state ; 

Absolute liberty of instruction, with the exception of 
that surveillance of morals which the state ought never 
to give up ; 

Liberty of the press, by the revocation of the laws of 
September ; 

Security of the seat of the National Assembly guaran- 
teed by a prudential law against any abuse of the forti- 
fications of Paris ; 

A permanent army, and an army of reserve, which 
would comprise the whole available military force of 
the country ; 

A fair and just law which should equally distribute 
the charges of recruiting ; 

Peace, — but France in her proper rank in peace as 
she was in war ; 

France the natural and avowed ally of liberty of ideas 
and of the liberty of nations throughout the universe ; 

Abolition of slavery wherever the French flag floats ; 

The organization of gratuitous instruction for the 
people on the largest basis ; 



OF LAMARTINE. 159 

Social brotherhood in principles and institutions ; 

Progressive free-taade ; 

Living rendered cheap by the reduction of those 
taxes which press heavily on articles of food ; 

A poor-rate, notwithstanding the calumnies by which 
the selfishness of political economists seeks to bring dis- 
credit on such an impost; 

Foundlings to be adopted by the state, and not flung 
back to death by an investigation into the circumstances 
of their birth, and by the closing of the turning- 
baskets ; 

The extinction of mendicity, asylums for the infirm, 
and public workshops for those in health ; 

Social charity promulgated in numerous laws, to aid 
all the wants, all the sufferings, and all the miseries 
that fall to the lot of the people ; 

A fixed sum given away each year as the liberality of 
the state ; 

A new office of minister of public benevolence ; 

A minister to superintend the people's mode of living 
(de la vie du peuple) ; 

Let the Government enter on this course of action, 
and we will follow it without asking whether it wears 
a crown, a tiara, or a hat." 

In this remarkable letter, which forms a striking 
combination of much that is sound in sense, and good 
in feeling, with some projects that are purely visionary, 
Lamartine did not declare himself entirely opposed to 
monarchy, but announced his conviction " that demo- 



160 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

cratic government would be the eternal government 
of that future towards which we were approaching." 
He stated it as his opinion that the sovereignty of the 
people might, without forfeiting its character, retain 
an hereditary magistracy at the top of its elective 
pyramid ; and summed up in the following words his 
views on this part of his subject : — " The People king ; 
Opinion holding rule ; with royalty as its executive." 
(Peuple roi ; opinion regnante ; royaute executive.) 

This letter was followed a few days afterwards by 
two letters on the situation of France in 1847 with 
reference to foreign powers. In the first Lamartine 
commented severely on the policy of the government 
with regard to the Eastern question. That policy, he 
said, brought isolation and consequent humiliation on 
France, and caused the blood of a people devoted to 
her interest to cry through all the Lebanon against 
her. He then criticised their policy in the matter of 
the Spanish marriages. He said they had evaded a 
treaty for the purpose of planning an intrigue, and had 
torn in pieces the Quadruple Alliance to replace it by 
the contract of the Montpensier marriage. They had 
notified this marriage to France as a great political 
achievement, and France had for a moment been 
deceived. "Alas!" he added, "what does she think 
of it at present, and, above all things, what will she 
think of it ten years hence ? The Spanish marriages," 






OF LAMARTINE. 161 

he continued, " were a suit without an end, which the 
dynastic temerity of the ministers had not hesitated 
to inflict on Europe, which raised eternal discord 
between France and England ; a suit which could 
only be decided by a war of succession, carried on by 
a nation for the benefit of a family ; a suit for which, 
in either case, France must pay most dearly, whether 
it were lost, or whether it were won." 

The next letter of Lamartine was devoted entirely 
to the consideration of the Italian question. He eulo- 
gized the occupant of the papal chair, whom he termed 
the crowned Rienzi of modern Rome ; but stated that, 
after studying Italy for twenty years, he considered 
the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, in the centre 
of that peninsula, an organic and almost insurmount- 
able obstacle to the active, firm, and independent 
union of its states under a single rule. He thought 
that the only way to equal the historical greatness of 
the Romans would be to succour and to save them 
now. " Happy," he exclaims, " this Washington of 
future Italy ! It seems/' he adds, " a sad and cruel 
thing to say, but this Washington, perhaps, must be 
a stranger ! " He afterwards defined the papacy at 
Rome, in its character of a temporal power, to be 
" the union in a single government of the faults of all 
other kinds of government, without any of their redeem- 
ing advantages." He thought that a federal league 



162 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

was the nearest approach that could be made to national 
unity in Italy, and that such a confederation could 
only be effected under the protection of some armed 
mediator, sufficiently strong to moderate and control 
the jealousies of rival princes as well as of rival 
nationalities. He thought that France alone was in a 
position thus to mediate for Italy : but he had no hope 
that the government would take this course. " The 
Spanish marriages had alienated England ; they had 
rendered impossible any new bond of union with states 
that were free and constitutional, and had forced 
France to go about begging for alliances with the 
natural foes of the liberty of nations." 

A sketch of the life and writings of Lamartine 
during and subsequently to the month of February, 
1848, would involve the necessity of entering more 
at length than I am prepared to do into the his- 
tory and details of the last French Revolution. His 
speeches at the Hotel de Ville, his circular to the 
foreign ministers then at Paris, as well as a variety of 
documents which, though signed by all the members 
of the Provisional Government, were evidently the 
productions of his pen, are matters of general notoriety, 
and may be found at length in the journals of the day. 

There is, however, at the conclusion of the speech 
on foreign policy which he delivered in the National 
Assembly on the 23rd of May, 1848, a passage which 



OF LAMAETINE. 163 

cannot be too often repeated or too highly eulogized : — - 
" The Government," said he, " has had but one idea — ■ 
that of placing France at peace with all the world. 
We have desired it in the interest of the People, in 
whose name and by whom was accomplished the revo- 
lution of February last. The People can only live by 
wages, which are the child of labour; but recollect 
that labour ceases when commerce and industry are 
paralyzed. Together with peace we have desired the 
renewal of industry, of labour, and of wages ; we have 
desired that the People should have the means of 
living. Formerly peace was regarded as an Utopia," it 
is now become an instinct, a necessity, the cause to 
which we have devoted the revolution. 

" I conclude with these few words : — We were told 
in former days that victory was on the side of large 
battalions ; one may now say that it will be on the 
side of right and justice." 

As a poet, Lamartine is distinguished by largeness 
of sympathy and benevolence of heart, combined with 
great elevation and tenderness of thought and feeling. 
He has faith, too, in the destinies and progress of man- 
kind. His soul and verse seem comprehensive enough 
to embrace them all without distinction of class, or 
race, or creed. He is deeply impressed with the con- 
solations of religion, and his generous love of freedom 
lends dignity to his efforts and life and vigour to his 



164 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

song. He seldom travels too far from the beaten track, 
nor does he seek recondite images. He commences 
with an idea or a sentiment common to all, and then 
proceeds to spiritualize affection or to idealize the 
world of sense. He possesses a well-stored memory 
and a graceful fancy. Indeed, he may be called the 
poet of memory and of fancy rather than the poet of 
imagination and passion. He cannot certainly be said 
to possess any very large amount of original or creative 
genius ; and for what is called dramatic force we look 
in vain to his poetry. His personages are not cha- 
racters who feel and speak for themselves as they 
naturally would do, but they are themes on which 
Lamartine himself expatiates, grouping around them 
thoughts and feelings essentially his own. This ten- 
dency he indulges to such an extent as to render his 
verse at times monotonous and wearisome even to 
minds not over critical and indulgent to the egotism 
of song. Description is his forte ; prolixity his foible. 
Whether he deals with human sentiment or natural 
scenery, the same fault is equally apparent. The senti- 
ments in the one case, the landscapes in the other, are 
too often encumbered with an excess of detail, and 
repeated sometimes until they cease to charm. He 
seems to forget that it is only by introducing those 
varieties and that relief which the natural world and 
man present, that the interest of the reader can be 



OF LAMARTIKE. 165 

for any length of time sustained. Side by side, how- 
ever, with his defects, he has merits of a high, if not 
the very highest order ; while the loftiness of his pur- 
pose, the comprehensiveness of his sympathy, the eleva- 
tion and independence of his thoughts and feelings, the 
purity of his enlarged benevolence, his glowing love 
of liberty, the earnestness of his zeal for progress and 
social amelioration, the tenderness and interest with 
which he invests the feelings and the incidents of 
domestic life, induce us to recur with pleasure to his 
poetry, and perpetuate his hold upon the human heart. 
His character, not only as a poet, but also as an orator 
and a politician, has been sketched by Cormenin, who 
published some years since, under the assumed name of 
Timon, a work, entitled ' Sketches of Parliamentary 
Orators.' The writer renders justice to his merits as a 
poet, and pays a fitting compliment to his well-stored 
memory, his tact, and high political integrity. " La- 
martine," he observes, " possesses a vast memory, which 
is able to retain and give forth all with which he stores 
it. This memory does not hesitate before interruptions, 
but easily plays along its course, and follows, without 
losing itself, the thread of a thousand turnings. Amid 
the storms of the tribune he does not lose his calmness, 
though, indeed, round him they are never very violent ; 
nor does he fail in tact and good taste in an extempo- 
raneous reply. Besides, there is not the least gall on 



166 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

his lips, and he evinces a poetical ingenuousness and an 
honesty of heart which have something maidenlike 
about them." 

This extract is taken from the ninth edition of this 
work. It has gone through I know not how many 
editions, in one of which the author, in speaking of his 
portrait of Lamartine, observes, " It has been the most 
difficult of all my portraits. I have touched and re- 
touched twenty times ; I have taken it down and replaced 
it on the easel. ... I have been on the point of 
throwing away my brushes. This portrait has been 
unceasingly the torment of my pallet." Undoubtedly 
Cormenin has not exaggerated the difficulties of pre- 
senting to the public that which might be called a 
satisfactory portrait of Lamartine. His political career 
has exhibited so many varying phases, that the bio- 
grapher must hesitate to pronounce an opinion on it. 
His life, however, seems through all its changing scenes 
to have evinced great nobleness of heart, independence 
of judgment, and integrity of purpose. 

At the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848 it cannot 
be denied that he rendered to his country the most 
exalted services of heroism and genius. He stood un- 
dismayed before the frenzy of the populace, and his 
eloquence alone stayed the fury of the storm. It was 
he who induced an excited people to acquiesce in the 
abolition of the punishment of death for all political 



OF LAMABTINE. 167 

offences. He thus with a most humane and chivalrou 
generosity threw the broad shield of his then unrivalled 
influence over the lives of the ministers who had fallen. 
He had before made an equally noble effort on behalf 
of the ex-ministers of Charles the Tenth. His country 
was not backward, at all events for a time, in acknow- 
ledging and honouring his services, and the result of 
the first elections to the National Assembly was for him 
the most magnificent of civil triumphs. All eyes in 
France and Europe were fixed intently on him, and 
seemed to regard him as the saviour of his country and 
the benefactor of the human race. It was thought that 
by a line of energetic, and at the same time conciliatory 
policy, equally removed from dictatorship on the one 
hand and unworthy compromise on the other, he might 
prove himself the Washington of the young Republic. 
These bright anticipations, however, were not destined 
to be realized. He did not give proof of that mastery 
of detail, that definiteness and fixity of purpose, that 
practical sagacity and skill in combination, without 
which no man can make good his claim to the character 
of a leading statesman. He seemed also to lend, to 
some extent, the credit of his name to dangerous illusions 
on the part of the French people. At his side, too, and 
associated with him in the government, stood a leader 
who was looked upon as daring and unscrupulous. 
Lamartine was probably of opinion that this unnatural 



168 LIFE AND WEITINGS 

alliance was the sole guarantee for the tranquillity of 
France — that one who might prove himself reckless in 
opposition might be rendered harmless as a colleague. 
If so, his error, though on a point of vital import, was 
an error of judgment rather than of principle. He is 
at all events entitled to be judged with reference to the 
circumstances with which he had to deal. The epoch 
was new, its exigencies fearful ; and where, it may be 
asked, was a statesman to be found equal to the wants 
of so exceptional a crisis ? " Genius," to use his own 
words, " challenges our pity when we see it condemned 
to grapple with impossibilities." 

His ambition was obscured by vanity, and marred 
throughout by inconsistency and indecision. It was, 
however, an ambition benevolent and pure, and remark- 
able for its high disinterestedness and its attachment to 
the noblest ends. The aims of his policy as a minister 
were, peace* abroad, and, at home, to save his country 
from bloodshed and civil war. These ends he declared 
himself determined to pursue, not only in the presence 
of a warlike nation, but amid the armed turbulence of 
an exasperated people. His loss of popularity may 
operate as a warning to the future statesmen of his 
country ; but let us hope that they will bear in mind his 
love of peace, his zeal for humanity, his horror of civil 
war ; and that, while they govern with a greater degree 
of firmness and with purposes more distinct and definite, 



OF LAMAETINE. 169 

they will emulate in the objects which they pursue the 
glory of his bright example. 

If we pass from his political to his literary achieve- 
ments, we find his claims far less open to dispute. He 
has won for himself in poetry alone an immortality of 
fame ; and whatever may be the fate of his political 
reputation — whatever place History, less biassed in her 
judgment than a capricious present, may assign to him — 
as a poet he will live in the admiration of mankind. 
Sentiments which are an honour' to the human heart 
he has clothed with language in which they must remain 
an ornament to the literature of France and Europe. 
It is indeed no small thing in such a country as France 
to have rendered the consolations of religion, and the 
graces and virtues which attend the domestic affections, 
popular in society, and popular also among the masses 
of the people. He has shown, too, that he possesses a 
sublime conception of the abstract dignity of man ; nor 
could his friends wish more than that his own per- 
sonal character, raised far above the vanity and in- 
consistencies which rest like clouds upon his fame, 
should have reached the splendid level of his ideal 
standard. 



ARTICLE ON LAMARTINE. 



The reappearance of Lamartine, as deputy for the 
Loiret, in the National Assembly of France, is a circum- 
stance which many on this side of the Channel will hail 
with unmixed pleasure and satisfaction. Less prone 
to hero-worship than our neighbours, we are, on the 
other hand, less ready to forget those who have once 
become the objects of our political favour and esteem. 
There was much in the career of Lamartine, during the 
short period for which he held the reins of power, 
which might serve as an explanation of his diminished 
influence, but there was nothing to justify the feeling 
which has for a time excluded him from the National 
Assembly. His rise and fall were alike without a 
parallel, and his transit from the region almost of adora- 
tion, to that of calumny, ingratitude, and neglect, will 
long bear witness, in the annals of the French nation, 
to the instability of popular applause, and to the shifting 
impulses of that mercurial people. We are glad for 
the sake of France, and, we may add, of England also, 
that a constituency has been found to restore him to a 
position in which, notwithstanding all his faults, his 
manly eloquence and strict integrity of purpose may 
render signal services to the cause of wholesome liberty, 
of free commercial intercourse, of progress and civili- 
zation. 



LAMAETINE. 171 

The able assailant of the September laws will soon 
find a field for honourable exertion in the abuses of 
that system which already threatens, in a vital point, 
the Liberty of the Press. The orator who, in May, 
1848, told the National Assembly, that, though formerly 
" Peace was regarded as an Utopia, it had then become 
an instinct and a necessity," may soon find occasion for 
impressing on the government of a warlike people the 
importance of entering, in concert with this country, on 
a system of unequivocally pacific foreign policy. 

But it is chiefly with reference to Free-trade prin- 
ciples — to those principles which have recently effected 
a partial change in the restrictive commercial policy of 
Spain — to those principles which the successors in office 
of Sir E. Peel have shown themselves both ready and 
able to carry out, — that we rejoice in the reappearance 
of Lamartine as a member of the National Assembly. 
Through him, while unincumbered by the toils and 
cares of office, we hope to see those principles advanced 
some steps towards their final triumph. As the subject 
is one of great importance to this country, it may not 
be uninteresting to recur to a portion of the speech 
which Lamartine delivered on the 24th of August, 
1847, at a meeting of the Free-Trade Association at 
Marseilles. Having alluded to that " language ofPro*- 
vidence which ordains to us life at a cheap rate," he 
continued, " that is the language of Providence and of 
Nature ; man only has been able to arrest it on their 
lips in order to substitute a language of his own — the 
language of nakedness and hunger. Man's language is, 
' Let lis make life dear ! ' Let us make life dear — and 

i 2 



172 LAMAETINE. 

how ? By prescribing to nations abstinences and com- 
pulsory fasts, side by side with the wealth, either 
natural or manufactured, with which they abound to 
overflowing. Let us place, it has been said, upon the 
frontiers of nations, armies which are paid by the 
money of the people, and are solely employed in inter- 
cepting and rendering scarce aliments, metals, utensils, 
fruits, and even the raw materials of labour, in order 
that all may suffer from the unemployed wealth of each, 
and groan, not under misery, but under general pros- 
perity ! 

"I speak here of customs, gentlemen; but, let it be 
understood, I speak of customs when used as an instru- 
ment of arbitrary prohibitions and privileges for certain 
industries, imposing a tax upon some to favour others ; 
and by no means of customs when regarded as an impost, 
natural, moderate, and useful to the state in its collec- 
tive character." 

After referring to that " enormous, confused, irra- 
tional volume," which was called the Tariff of French 
Customs, " I asked myself," he added, " as I turned over 
the leaves of this code of our voluntary misfortunes — 
' Is it possible that this can be the law of God ? ' 'Is 
it possible that this can be the law of truth ? ' ' Is it 
possible that this can be the gospel of true protection 
and charity for the masses of the people ?' No ! it is 
the code of selfishness ! It is the book of gold and of 
monopoly ! It is the gospel of social falsehood, and of 
the blind cupidity of the insatiable producer against 
the indigent consumer." 

We cannot believe that Lamartine will prove a 



LAMARTIKE. 173 

recreant to the sentiments thus forcibly and eloquently 
expressed. We trust that, having taken a memorable 
part in a late momentous revolution, he will, with 
unabated zeal, and with the light of more matured 
experience, contribute to bring about another revolu- 
tion, less equivocal in character, and more fruitful in its 
results— a revolution which, some years since, in his 
reply to Berryer, on the motion of M. Desmousseaux de 
Givre, and in allusion to the free-trade measures of Sir 
Kobert Peel, he described as " the revolution of food ; 
the most useful," he added, " the most productive of 
revolutions, and one which does not cause human tears 
or blood to flow." By snch means he may win for him- 
self a jewel of higher price than any that yet glitters in 
his poetic crown, and lay the foundation, among the 
masses of his countrymen, of a healthy, practical, and 
enduring fame. — July 19, 18-19. 



REMARKS 



ON THE 

FORMATION OF THE ST. JAMES'S LITERAKY 
AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 



There are few men more ready when called on than 
the Earl of Carlisle to bear part in philanthropic under- 
takings, or to share the efforts which naturally devolve 
on those who possess "graceful and cultivated under- 
standings. It is but a short time since that he delivered 
to the mechanics of Leeds a lecture on the poetry of 
Pope (of whose writings he, in common with Lord 
Byron, appears to be a great admirer), and successfully 
endeavoured to redeem his favourite author from the 
neglect and depreciation of an age whose poetical taste 
has gone astray. From lectures on poetry, and travels 
in America, addressed to the mechanics of the north, he 
passes to an effort of a more practical character in 
favour of the Brighton Branch Association for Improv- 
ing the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes. Within 
the last few days we find him still pursuing the career 
of honourable exertion, and endeavouring, in conjunction 



ST. JAMES'S LITERAEY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 175 

with, among others, Sir Henry Delabeche and Dr. 
Lankester, to foster by his presence, and the attraction 
of an interesting and eloquent address, a projected 
association (to be called the "St. James's Literary and 
Scientific Society ") intended chiefly for the benefit of 
the artisans and tradesmen's apprentices in an important 
part of the metropolis. Here again the influence of his 
efforts was shown in the applause which greeted him, 
and in the numbers who, when the meeting was con- 
cluded, enrolled themselves as members of the Society. 
A work well begun is said to be half finished ; and, 
approving of the objects which they have in view, we 
congratulate the projectors of the Society on the success 
by which their labours have been hitherto attended. 

A sketch of the origin and growth of these and similar 
institutions, whether known by the title of Mechanics' 
Institutes, Or by whatever other name distinguished, 
would form a very interesting chapter in the history of 
England's intellectual and moral progress. Such a 
sketch would, however, lead us far beyond the limits of 
our present space and purpose. A glance, and that a 
slight one, must suffice. 

Mechanics' Institutes owe their origin to a plan which 
was formed in Glasgow by Dr. Birkbeck, at the com- 
mencement of the present century, for imparting to the 
humbler classes of his fellow-countrymen that acquaint- 
ance with the sciences which had been till then regarded 



176 FORMATION OF THE ST. JAMES'S 

as almost exclusively the prerogative of birth and for- 
tune. Edinburgh, in 1821, while following, improved 
on the example which Glasgow had been the first to set. 
London, on witnessing the success which had attended 
the working of these establishments in the north, was 
shortly afterwards prevailed on to form a similar insti- 
tution. Here, again, Dr. Birkbeck was the chief and 
most zealous promoter of popular education. His efforts 
were ably seconded by Lord Brougham — the Henry 
Brougham of other days — whose sympathies found elo- 
quent expression in an article in the ' Edinburgh Review' 
for October, 1824, on the Scientific Education of the 
People. From that time to the present these institu- 
tions have increased and multiplied throughout the 
length and breadth of England. They have carried 
not only into crowded cities, but into remote and very 
frequently ill-informed agricultural communities, the 
glories of science, the delights of learning, and the 
refinements of literature and taste. 

The chief object of such institutes as that which has 
just been started, under the best of auspices, in the 
parish of St. James's, is to supply what may be termed 
the great want of our artisans and working classes — 
sound instruction combined with the largest practical 
amount of cheap and innocent amusement. "It is 
intended," said Lord Carlisle in his address, " if proper 
support is afforded from without, to procure suitable 



LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 177 

premises, having a reading-room supplied with the best 
reviews, periodicals, publications, and papers ; a library 
furnished with literary works of greater bulk and 
higher pretensions ; a lecture-room where lectures on 
appropriate subjects will be delivered by celebrated and 
competent professors. It is also intended, in addition 
to this, to open classes for the different branches of 
useful knowledge — such as drawing, chemistry, and 
others of the arts and sciences — that the members may 
be enabled to acquire useful information, and to add to 
their stock of knowledge." The realization of the 
extensive scheme which is here propounded will require 
not only strenuous exertions on the part of the founders 
of the institution, but active support and co-operation 
on the part of those for whose benefit it is principally 
designed. Eloquent addresses and titled patrons are a 
good beginning, but no more. It is to the artisans and 
to the working classes themselves that such establish- 
ments must appeal to give them muscle, strength, 
vitality. Such aid and co-operation we entertain no 
doubt that the institution in question will receive. 

Among the benefits resulting to society from Mecha- 
nics' Institutes we must not omit to mention their effect 
(well noticed in an Essay on the subject published at 
Devonport, and now before us) " in bringing together 
various classes of the community, the artisan and the 
peer, the mechanic and the merchant, the labourer who 

i 3 



178 FORMATION OF THE ST. JAMES'S 

tills the soil or digs in the mine and the owner of the 
broad acres about which that labour is spent ; all classes 
meeting with their distinctive features upon them, yet 
one in the object they pursue and the desire they 
entertain — the increase of knowledge. Great," con- 
tinues the writer, " is the advantage to society resulting 
from this commingling — greater the benefit to the indi- 
viduals themselves. The rich and influential become 
conversant with those in a different grade of society, 
and, learning their opinions, are enabled to correct 
false notions and implant right ones ; thus they gain 
the esteem and confidence of their less wealthy fellow- 
men, and become their natural leaders. On the one 
side kindness, and on the other independence, create a 
healthful feeling, and tend at the same time to sound 
order and national freedom." We trust that the 
patrons who have lent their names will occasionally, at 
all events, lend their presence to the meetings of the 
St. James's Institute, not to damp their spirit by cold 
and laboured condescension, but to communicate and 
receive the advantages which must result from the frank 
and fearless intercourse of heart with heart and mind 
with mind. 

The time has happily gone by at which it was neces- 
sary to vindicate these institutions from objections in a 
religious point of view. " It is preposterous," observed 
Lord Brougham, in the article before referred to, " to 



LITERAEY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 179 

imagine that the enlargement of the understanding and 
our acquaintance with the laws which regulate the uni- 
verse can dispose to unbelief. It may be a cure for 
superstition — for intolerance it will be a most certain 
cure ; but a pure and true religion has nothing to fear 
from the greatest expansion which the intellect can 
receive by the study either of matter or of mind. The 
more science is diffused, the better will the Author of 
all things be known, and the less will people be ' tossed 
to and fro by the sleight of men, and cunning crafti- 
ness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.' To tyrants, 
indeed, and bad rulers, the progress of knowledge 
among the mass of mankind is a just object of terror — 
it is fatal to them and their designs ; they know this by 
unerring instinct, and unceasingly they dread the light. 
But they find it more easy to curse than to extin- 
guish." 

Objections on the ground of religion, if entertained, 
might have been answered, on the occasion to which 
we have referred, by the presence of one spoken of by 
Lord Carlisle in his address as the " exemplary " and 
"judicious " Rector of St. James's — a gentleman of 
liberal and enlightened views, whom we are happy to 
see acting in such a cause in conjunction with influential 
members of different dissenting denominations. On 
our part we heartily bid " God speed," not only to the 
St. James's Institution, but to all similar institutions 



180 ST. JAMES'S LITERAEY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 

throughout the land. Their results, though they 
cannot perhaps be accurately or fully traced, are, we 
feel convinced, of incalculable importance in the civili- 
zation which they advance, and the opportunities for 
happiness which they afford. Their services will, we 
doubt not, receive a due acknowledgment when some 
future Macaulay shall devote the leisure of an honour- 
able intellectual retirement to the task of transmitting, 
through ages yet to be, a History of England in the 
Nineteenth Century. — April 14, 1851. 



ESSAY 



ON 



HUMAN HAPPINESS, 

By C. B. ADDERLEY, M.P. 



The subject of this Essay has been a favoured theme 
in almost every age and country. In the brightest 
period of the philosophy of Greece, the connexion 
between Virtue and Happiness engaged the attention 
of the greatest minds, and gave a practical and en- 
during interest to the ethical disquisitions of the Aca- 
demy and the Lyceum. At a later period, when 
surrounded by the dangerous seductions of Epicurus, 
the same question called forth the lofty principles of 
the Stoics, and roused the stern antagonism of that far 
nobler school. Still later, if we follow the track of 
Rome's intelligence, we find it occupying the thoughts 
of one who was her mightiest orator, and selected as a 
theme by some among her children, who have per- 
petuated, even to the age in which we live, the classic 
beauties of her imperishable song. 

In Spain, the chosen land of adventure and romance, 



182 ESSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

the sober gravity of the subject has not deprived it of 
literary homage. In the days of that illustrious Prince 
of the House of Austria, whose youth was shielded by 
the experience of Ximenes, and whose age declined 
in the monastery of St. Justus, we find Mejia, in his 
apologue of ' Idleness and Labour,' inviting, beneath 
the veil of a graceful allegory, the attention of his 
countrymen to the chief conditions on which human 
happiness depends. In Spain, too, as was the case at 
Rome, the theme received a tribute from her muse, 
and Mendoza,* like a second Horace, addressed a more 
poetical Numicius. 

To take but one additional instance from the oppo- 
site extremity of Europe, we find, in a treatise entitled 
' Rosgavor Schastu,' the subject now before us invested 
with all the interest which must attach to the produc- 
tions of Karamsin, the distinguished poet and historian 
of the North. 

In our own land the subject has occupied so many 
writers that it would be tedious to enumerate and in- 
vidious to select. The theme has been ennobled by 
our moralists, and, as was the case in the classic period 
of antiquity, our poets have embodied it in their song. 

The choice of such a subject for an essay, by a 
Member of the British Legislature, is a fact which we 
must welcome as a favourable omen. It indicates, at 
* See his Epistle to Boscan. 



ESSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 183 

all events, benevolent intention, and great solicitude for 
the welfare of humanity, on the part of one whose 
position as a legislator implies no inconsiderable oppor- 
tunities for doing good. 

Mr. Adderley adopts as a motto for his Essay an 
excellent remark of Mackintosh : " Labour, if it were 
unnecessary to the existence, would be necessary to the 
happiness of men." From this we learn at once that 
the author's idea of happiness is, that it is an active 
state. It is found in the vineyard of the wise, in 
which human toil receives its recompence ; not in the 
paradise of fools, in which the indolent repose ; and, 
in the words of the graceful and pathetic author of 
' The Man of Feeling'— 

" 'Tis the pursuit rewards the active mind, 
And what in rest we seek, in toil we find. 
***** 

Where passive sense with all her powers would miss, 
The springs of action move the wheels of bliss." 

The Essay now before us assumes, as the author 
observes, almost the character of a lay sermon. We 
apprehend that we shall not misstate his general views 
respecting happiness, when we say that he considers it 
to be the result of virtuous efforts, springing from, 
supported and tested by, religious principles, and 
directed by them with regard to means and ends. 
Such a result accompanies virtuous exertions, whether 



184 ESSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

they be, or be not, crowned with success, and whether 
they do, or do not, win for us human praise.* 

Mr. Adderley, in order to reconcile his " condemna- 
tion of ease and enjoyment with the instinctive idea in 
every man's mind of the happiness and dignity of 
repose, and that it even constitutes the felicity of the 
blessed," tells us that, though repose may be the per- 
fection of our state hereafter, here we are but travellers, 
and may rest only at short and stated intervals. 

In the course of his inquiry Mr. Adderley insists 
strongly on the necessity of self-examination and medi- 
tation, with reference to the former of which duties he 
quotes the following impressive words of Thomas a 
Kempis: — "Keep thine eye turned inwardly upon 
thyself, and beware of judging the actions of others. 
In judging others a man labours to no purpose, com- 
monly errs, and easily sins ; but in judging himself he 
is always wisely and usefully employed." 

Happiness, then, according to Mr. Adderley, results 
from disinterested efforts, varied only and enlivened by 
refreshing intervals of repose, and communion with 
ourselves and God. It is in the lot of those who, 

* The importance to human happiness of such an independence 
as that to which Mr. Adderley alludes is admirably set forth hy 
Jeremy Taylor in that beautiful section of the 2nd chapter of his 
' Holy Living,' in which he is considering the influence of Con- 
tentedness. That section, which deserves to rank with the Golden 
Verses of Pythagoras, contains a rich store of useful hints respecting 
happiness. 



ESSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 185. 

while engaged in a career of virtuous exertion, are 
content to " leave results in the hands of Him, in sub- 
jection to whom, and on whose approval, it (that is, 
Happiness) exists." 

Our limits will not allow us to follow in detail the 
arguments of Mr. Adderley's Essay. We think its great 
fault is, that it wants simplicity, not only in its plan but 
in its language. The meaning of the author is occasi- 
onally obscured by the employment of expressions which 
are not in common use. We think that this is parti- 
cularly remarkable in that passage, in the third page of 
his Essay, which contains his deduction against idleness. 
Then, again, the passage in page 36, which contains an 
allusion to the Sirens of Luxury ; and that in page 76, 
in which he speaks of " the ethereal elasticity of the 
human soul," are passages which, we are sure, Mr. 
Adderley would not, on reflection, consider calculated 
to extend his reputation as a writer. We fear, too, 
that, when he speaks of negative tests suggesting their 
positive correlatives, his meaning will be lost to many, 
to whom, if less technical in its expressions, his Essay 
would have been most welcome. The plan of the 
Essay would, we think, have been both simplified and 
improved by a division of its contents into chapters. 

We are, however, most unwilling to find fault where 
the object of a writer is a good one ; and from the 
passages which have called forth the preceding obser- 



186 ESSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

vations, we turn with pleasure to others well worthy of 
commendation. The author, after speaking of sensu- 
ality, attacks in the following terms the analogous 
mental indulgences which consist in the pursuit of 
intellectual novelties without reference to any practical 
end : — " The mere luxuriator in intellectual pleasure 
is," he observes, " only less grossly selfish, gorging 
knowledge as the glutton food, not for exercise, but 
for the mere purposeless and artificial enjoyment of a 
diseased vicissitude of appetite and satiety." 

The following short sentences also contain sugges- 
tions which it would be well for all men to bear in 
mind : — 

" Far better be conscious of a thousand errors, than 
feel satisfied in fancied superiority over others." 

" The contentment of a Christian is with his lot, 
never with himself," 

" One course alone bears with it ever fresh and 
constant satisfaction, and that is the sustained pursuit of 
good intentions (query, objects ?) throughout the daily 
instalments of whatever materials of duty life's various 
accidents may offer." v 

Mr. Adderley informs his readers that this Essay is 
to be followed and illustrated by successive views of 
various lines of human life in detail, and he will, we 
hope, pardon us if, with reference to his next efforts, 
we offer him a few suggestions. He would, we think, 



ESSAY ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 187 

do well to study with attention the more popular cha- 
racteristics of some among our writers who have 
adorned the department which he has chosen. He 
would find in Jeremy Taylor great warmth of imagi- 
nation, variety of anecdote, and cheerfulness of tone — 
in Blair as much simplicity of treatment as moral 
subjects will admit — in Paley a striking familiarity and 
singular appropriateness of illustration — in Dugald 
Stewart elevation of sentiment, embodied in language 
which satisfies the requirements of elegance and taste. 
He must, we think, admit that these writers, notwith- 
standing their intrinsic merits, would never have become 
so popular or extensively useful as they are, if their 
sentiments had not been conveyed to us in an engaging 
and attractive form. We hope that Mr. Adderley, as 
a writer, will in future bear in mind and emulate not 
only the elevation of their moral precepts, but the 
graces of their respective styles. — May 12, 1849. 



TALES AND SKETCHES 

FOR 

FIBE-SIDE BEADING. 

By CHARLES FLEET. 



There are few things more popular than a collection 
of well-written sketches. They fill up very pleasantly 
and profitably the intervals of active life, and blend 
Jiarmoniously with its duties and its requirements. 
The ' Sketch-book ' of Washington Irving was a 
masterpiece in its way, and has proved a fascinating, 
though sometimes perilous example. Tales or sketches 
may be taken up and read in odd half-hours. The 
interest is concentrated, and, though they severally 
afford less scope for variety of incident than longer 
efforts, they at all events do not weary us by prolixity. 
The length, too, of every such tale or sketch is, or 
ought to be, limited only by the nature of its contents, 
and not by servile reference to a standard as ridiculous 
as it is stubborn and uniform. In this respect the 
author of a collection of sketches has a manifest advan- 
tage over the fashionable novelist, who, whatever may 



TALES AND SKETCHES FOE FIRE-SIDE READING. 189 

be the nature of his subject, is bound in every case to 
spin it out into exact conformity with the orthodox 
dimensions, and to produce three volumes, each more 
tedious, perhaps, than its predecessor. 

The volume now before us is a collection of short 
tales, alternating with chapters which consist chiefly of 
what may be termed reflections upon life and character. 
Of the tales we prefer ' The New Governess ' and ' The 
Friends.' These contain many traits of true and tender 
feeling, and exhibit, in several passages, great delicacy 
of touch, with an evidence of sympathies which do 
honour to the writer — sympathies which are fitted to 
become the foundation of active as well as useful effort. 
'The Friends' we should like to see published as a 
penny tract, and scattered extensively over the country ; 
we think it might save many of the weaker sex from 
being made, as they are made too frequently, the dupes 
of avarice of the most unprincipled and loathsome kind. 
With the tale entitled ' The New Governess ' we have 
but one fault to find, that it is too short. It ends in 
the part at which the chief interest is just beginning 
If carried to a conclusion it might be made to point 
the moral which it now hardly suggests with sufficient 
distinctness. This omission may, however, be easily 
remedied in a second edition, and is redeemed for the 
present by such passages as the following, which shows 
the influence of the affection of a child in withdrawing 



11)0 TALES AND SKETCHES 

the " New Governess " from feelings of absolute isola- 
tion and despair : — 

" The tears of the governess flowed faster than ever 
as she kissed the little comforter who had crept to her 
side — they flowed faster than ever, but not so pas- 
sionately nor so bitterly. The sense of utter desertion 
— of complete loneliness — had passed away ; kind words 
had fallen upon her ear; and her heart, which was 
about to close against the hardness and coldness of the 
natures around her, now opened again to softer feelings. 
Amidst the storm of fear, and shame, and indignation, 
which had torn her soul to pieces, one drop of oil had 
fallen — over the waste of doubt and distraction one ray 
of light had arisen. A human creature had uttered kind 
words — a human creature was hanging about her neck ; 
and slight as was the tie, it was strong enough to bind 
her down to that task which she was about to fly from 
with abhorrence." 

The chapter on ' Undeveloped Greatness ' is full of 
good, practical common sense, and contains some 
valuable suggestions. The author visits with ridicule 
the common delusions of those who love to place them- 
selves in the ranks of " the mute inglorious Miltons," 
the bloodless Cromwells, or silent Chathams, and who 
would have been they don't know who, if they had 
possessed they don't know what. 

"True," says he, in allusion to such persons, " it is 
too late — and for people who complain in this tone it 



FOE FIRE-SIDE READING. 191 

always was too late or too early. The time is never 
come, or it is past. The present is never in their power, 
as it must be in the power of those who doom them- 
selves to greatness ; it is never a time of trial, of effort, 
of painful struggle, of continual striving and doing. 
They do not know such a present as this, and therefore 
it is that when they look upon the past it is a blank to 
them. 

" We have little or no sympathy with those who 
indulge in regrets of this kind, and who console them- 
selves for their insignificance or incompetency by re- 
proaching those who brought them up. Those persons 
who really possess the power of shaping out a course 
for themselves different from that of the crowd around 
them, never complain that it was not done for them by 
others ; they know very well that it could not be done 
by any other hand than their own ; and that if they do 
not do it themselves they have nobody else to blame. 
Successful or unsuccessful, they are silent. They may 
reproach themselves, they never utter a word against 
any one else. True, they might have had their path 
smoothed for them. But, no — that is more than doubt- 
ful : it is not the smooth, clear path that forms the great 
man, but more frequently the difficulties that he en- 
counters, in overcoming which he increases the strength 
of his will — his power to do— without which no man 
can be great." 

There are some good remarks bearing on the dwell- 
ings of the lower orders in a chapter entitled ' Single 
Houses and Married Couples,' in which the writer con- 



192 TALES AND SKETCHES 

trasts the French and English systems. He arrives at 
a conclusion in favour of the latter, founded chiefly on 
a consideration of its influences as regards individual 
development, and also as regards the preservation of 
national character. We have hardly space left for 
further quotation or remark. We cannot, however, 
refrain from quoting a charming passage, in which the 
beauty and innocence of children is strikingly contrasted 
with what are but too frequently the character and con- 
dition of those from whom they spring : — 

" Wonderful, yet how admirable and beautiful, that 
from the hardened beings which the world makes, from 
the coarse trader, the unfeeling man of money, the reck- 
less speculator, the selfish man of pleasure, and all the 
diversities which make np modern society — that from 
these, as from the shapeless, colourless bulb, such beau- 
teous flowers should spring up, as if Nature still, by her 
own effort, carried us back to that bright starting-point 
which, as we advance in life, we wander from more and 
more ; as if she continually reminded us, by the purity 
and joyfulness of these beings, that she is still the same, 
and never varies from her model, let us change as we 
may ! He is a happy, and, generally speaking, a good 
man, who can be a boy amongst boys— who has pre- 
served a relish and a zest for their pleasures — who can 
sink his presumed superiority, and lose himself in those 
happy joyous feelings which animate boys in their 
sports. Happy he too who can enter into the joys, and 
griefs, and sympathies, and hopes of children — who can 



FOR FIRE-SIDE READING. 193 

see the beauties which they spy out, though the sight 
be ever so common to him, and appreciate the cause of 
their grief and heaviness, though it be ever so transi- 
tory ! Happy he to whom the bright looks of youth 
come with as warm a tone as the sun gives to a land- 
scape — for he may be sure that, old as he is, he has yet 
kept some of those precious gifts which we all receive, 
and most of us leave behind in youth." 

The present is, we believe, the author's first published 
production : we hope it will not be his last. His hopes 
are, he says, " to please ; " but we think that those who 
peruse his volume will find in it much that is not 
merely pleasing, but, at the same time, valuable and 
suggestive, — June 1, 1850. 



IN MEMORIAL 



" A thing of beauty," says a poet of whose fountain 
of inspiration Alfred Tennyson has drunk deeply, " is 
a joy for ever." Yes, and an exquisite joy too, pro- 
ductive of good, though not in form or terms didactic 
by the analogies of moral beauty and fitness which it 
suggests. To Alfred Tennyson we are indebted for 
many of these joys, in which our children and our 
children's children will participate as largely as our- 
selves. In his present volume, too", in the midst of 
much that we consider, with regard to its influence, 
objectionable — in the midst of faults with which his 
readers are familiar — affected simplicity or affected 
mysticism, far-fetched originalities or eccentricities of 
style and diction — there are beauties of the kind to 
which we have alluded — bright creations which take their 
place at once and for ever in the poetry of England. 

We shall not at present attempt to enter generally 
on the character of the writings of Alfred Tennyson, 
or on the relative position which he occupies as a poet. 
One attribute of true genius, simplicity, is unquestion- 
ably wanting in him, or, we should rather say, is 



m MEMOEIAM. 195 

wanting in many of his productions. The minds which 
have master- thoughts within — thoughts which sweep 
the world, full of life, and power, and beauty, or flow 
in tranquil currents through its plains and valleys, 
carrying humanity along with them — do not usually 
study to clothe the soul's creations with quaint or 
curious felicities of style or diction. In thoughts the 
truth and beauty of which are recognised by all, though 
none had ever yet produced them, — in the language 
which all use, but which none have used so well, — in 
these lie the sources and the secrets of that high and 
world-pervading influence to which genius and the poet, 
above all others, should aspire. 

The want of this attribute in the productions of 
Alfred Tennyson is the more to be regretted, for, when 
he only condescends to let Nature have her way, we 
do not know that there is any writer whose simplicity 
and naturalness are more captivating and graceful. 
How free from affectation, how full of unconscious 
beauty, are i The Miller's Daughter ' and that poem 
of poems ' The May Queen ' ! In the present volume, 
too, how simple, yet how powerful, and we had almost 
said sublime, are those words in which he glances at 
the occurrence from which his latest effusions took their 



* The death of Mr. Hallam, a son of the historian, the friend of 
the poet and the " fiance " of his sister. 

K 2 



196 IN MEMOKIAM. 

" In Vienna's fatal walls 
God's finger touch'd Mm, and he slept." 

The chief fault that we find with the volume now 
before us is, that it is too depressing, and is likely to 
engender sickly and morbid feelings in minds of a 
certain class. We notice, too, an almost total absence 
of those higher consolations which religion should sug- 
gest. We miss those hues of cheerfulness and manly 
resignation with which Christianity invests the out- 
pourings of her stricken children, adding health, and 
life, and beauty to the Christian elegy, while she en- 
nobles and dignifies regret The sadness of the volume, 
though extreme, is captivating. The heart must be 
cold that does not sympathise with the poet's loss, or 
that follows, without emotion, all the wayward echoes 
and indistinct articulations of his too protracted grief. 
In this the danger lies. The more sweetly the poet 
sings, the more sympathy his loss excites, the more 
liable is the grief which he unrestrainedly indulges .to 
become, in the case of the young, not a casual indul- 
gence of sweet, sorrowful affection, but a habit of 
thought, and, it may be, a pervading tone of feeling. 

We know that we are treading on somewhat deli- 
cate ground ; we will therefore present a few passages 
to our readers, and leave them to say whether they 
have a wholesome tendency, and whether they are such 
strains as we are entitled to expect from the efforts and 



IN MEMORIAM. 197 

aspirations of a healthy Christian manhood. We are 
prevented by the limits to which we are confined from 
giving, at length, the poems in which the tendency we 
complain of is observable ; but the following short ex- 
tracts will sufficiently show our meaning : — 

" Oh, -what to her shall be the end ? 
And what to me remains of good ? 
To her perpetual maidenhood, 
And unto me no second friend. 



Still onward winds the dreary way — 
I with it ; for I long to prove 
No lapse of moons can canker Love, 

Whatever fickle tongues may say. 

# * * * 

With weary steps I loiter on, 

Though always under alter' d skies ; 
The purple from the distance dies, 

My prospect and horizon gone. 

No joy the blowing season gives — 
The herald melodies of spring ; 
But in the songs I love to sing 

A doubtful gleam of solace lives. 



Falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
That slope thro' darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope." 

When a poet of mature years is running on in this 
strain, we feel tempted to interrupt him with the manly 



198 IN MEMOEIAM. 

and energetic language of Longfellow, in his spirited 
4 Psalm of Life:'— 

" In the world's broad field of battle, 
In the bivouac of life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 
Be a hero in the strife ! 

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! 

Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
Act, — act in the living Present ! 

Heart within and God o'erhead." 

We have discharged a duty; we enter on a task 
more pleasing. 

Alfred Tennyson has a keen and an observant eye 
for natural beauties, and no man more truthfully de- 
scribes them. He is evidently at home with Nature, 
as is shown in the present volume, whether it be that 
he communes with her in localities where " thick, by 
ashen roots, the violets blow," or where he sees " Au- 
tumn laying, here and there, A fiery finger on the 
leaves," or turns his eye upward, to the vault of hea- 
ven, where " drown' d," as he beautifully observes, " in 
living blue, The lark becomes a sightless song." These 
touches require no comment from the critic. The 
following passage, too, is powerful, and equally true 
to nature with those we have just quoted : — 

" To-night the winds began to rise 

And roar from yonder dropping day : 
The last red leaf is whirl' d away ; 
The rooks are blown about the skies ; 



IN MEMOKIAM. 199 

The forest crack'd, the waters cnrl'd, 
The cattle huddled on the lea, 
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 

The sunbeam strikes along the world." 

The poem on the Ringing out of the Old Year is, in 
our opinion, the most beautiful in the volume. It is 
free from the objections to which we have alluded, and 
far surpasses that on the Death of the Old Year, which 
has been published among the author's earlier efforts. 
It is suggestive, healthy, full of generous aspirations, 
poetical, sympathetic, Christian : — 

" Eing out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 

The flying cloud, the frosty light. 

The Year is dying in the night ; 
Eing out, wild bells, and let him die. 
Eing out the old, ring in the new, 

Eing, happy bells, across the snow : 

The Year is going, let him go ; 
Eing out the false, ring in the true. 
Eing out the grief that saps the mind 

For those that here we see no more ; 

Eing out the feud of rich and poor, 
Eing in redress to all mankind. 
Eing out a slowly dying cause, 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 

Eing in the nobler modes of life, 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 
Eing out the want, the care, the sin, 

The faithless coldness of the times ; 

Eing out, ring out my mournful rhymes, 
But ring the fuller minstrel in. 
Eing out false pride in place and blood, 

The civic slander and the spite ; 

Eing in the love of truth and right, 
Eing in the common love of God. 



200 IN MEMORIAM. 

Ring out the shapes of foul disease, 
Eing out the narrowing lust of gold ; 
Eing out the thousand wars of old, 

Eing in the thousand years of peace. 

Eing in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Eing out the darkness of the land, 

Eing in the Christ that is to be." 

We trust that we shall not be held to have found 
fault needlessly with the productions of one who is in 
favour with the public, and whose poetry we ourselves, 
in many respects, sincerely admire. We would not 
have him sacrifice one tittle of that which is in the best 
and in the truest sense poetical, but we would have 
him break loose altogether from the trammels of that 
which Mr. Taylor has termed " the Fantastic School " 
(in which Shelley's example has been a snare to many 
who have wanted the apology of his genius), and pour 
forth for high and holy purposes, and in shapes more 
intelligible and distinct, those streams of truth, of 
poetry, and of affection, which might flow, we are con- 
vinced, full of life, and power, and beauty, to make 
men happier and better, from the well-springs of his 
soul. When we think of all the hearts which such a 
mind and such a pen might set stirring in the right 
direction, we pray earnestly that it may not be his 
destiny to leave behind him the remembrance of a high 
mission shadowed forth but unfulfilled. — June 29, 
1850. 



GAME BIRDS AM) WILD FOWL: 

THEIR FRIENDS AND THEIR FOES. 

By A. E. KNOX, M.A., F.L.S., 

AUTHOR Or 'ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES IN SUSSEX.' 



The authors of works on sporting have no reason to 
complain of any lack of popularity or public patronage, 
From the days of Izaak Walton or of Beckford to the 
present time, most works of this description, if marked 
by intrinsic merit, have at once received and have con- 
tinued to enjoy a large amount of favour and attention. 
When Beckford's ' Thoughts on Hunting' made their 
appearance, the ' Monthly Review,' a great authority 
in the days when no ' Edinburghs ' or ' Quarterlys ' ex- 
isted, put forth what was intended to prove a crushing 
article. The ' Review ' produced, however, about the 
same effect that a late malignant article in the 
1 Quarterly ' produced on the fortunes of Macaulay's 
History. Beckford's work went through several edi- 
tions, and will probably survive the memory of the 
* Review ' which sought to crush it. Colonel Hawker's 
well-known work on shooting has met with similar 
success. His volume, though too " professional " in 

K 3 



202 GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL : 

many of its details for any but an enthusiast in sport, 
contains passages clear, vigorous, and spirited, which 
have an interest for every reader. Of late years very 
many works have issued from the press in which the 
character of the naturalist has been blended more or 
less with the character of the sportsman, and which 
have met with favour from reviewers and from the 
public. Without intending to select invidiously, we 
may mention the works of Blaine and Colquhoun, as 
well as those of Wilson, Scrope, and St. John. These 
writers have appeared before the public as literary 
sportsmen or sporting naturalists. 

Mr. Knox has taken his place in the latter of these 
two classes. , He evidently loves sport, and has pursued 
it with intense eagerness. There is a freshness and an 
enthusiasm in his adventures, as he depicts them, which 
make the reader and the writer one. Not only does 
he love sport and know how to describe it, but we feel 
convinced that he is a genuine sportsman. This is 
shown amongst other things by the preference which he 
avows for variety rather than quantity of spoil. He 
likes both to work and to work well for what he gets. 
He is not one of the dandies who start at midday from 
the drawing-room to have game driven up to them, 
which they butcher by the cartload, and then flatter 
themselves that they are worthy representatives of the 
now almost extinct race of good old English sportsmen. 



THEIR FRIENDS AND THEIR FOES. 203 

With Mr. Knox, the sport he loves is, however, not an 
end, but a means towards one. His end is a know- 
ledge of birds, with all their instincts and peculiarities. 
He is ever ready to forego a tempting shot, rather than 
lose a chance of adding to his store any interesting 
habit or characteristic of the denizens of that winged 
world with which he seeks acquaintance. This in an 
author is a good quality and worthy of imitation. 

It is time, however, to give a specimen of the work 
before us, and we shall commence by quoting a passage 
relating to the red-legged partridge : — 

" The introduction," says Mr. Knox, " into this country 
of the red-legged partridge (perdix rubra), called also 
the Guernsey partridge and the French partridge, is a 
subject of regret with most sportsmen, especially in 
some parts of Norfolk, where the value of certain manors 
has been much deteriorated by its increase. In the 
first place, their extreme wildness, the rapidity with 
which they run, and their reluctance to take wing, are 
serious objections, as they not only spoil the dogs, but 
disappoint the shooter. In the next, even when killed 
— although their varied plumage, and especially the 
brilliant colour of the beaks and legs, cannot fail to be 
admired — yet the flesh is far inferior to that of any of 
our game birds — indeed, in my opinion, scarcely to be 
distinguished from that of a guinea-fowl. Lastly, it has 
been found that, in those districts where they have once 
obtained a firm footing, the disappearance of our indi- 
genous partridge (perdix cinerea) has been the result — 



204 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL : 

one to be regretted in every point of view, sporting and 
culinary ; for with, so many disadvantages the foreigner 
does not possess a single redeeming quality to justify 
his usurpation. 

" It has often struck me as a singular fact in natural 
history, that, when two species which are very closely 
allied are brought into juxtaposition, the weaker or less 
warlike will gradually give way to the other, and even- 
tually become exceedingly rare or extinct. It would 
appear that similarity in habits, as well as a near rela- 
tionship or affinity, is a necessary condition. The old 
English black rat (mus rattus), now almost unknown in 
his native land, had existed in this country for ages, on 
good terms with the water-rat (arvicola amphibius), and 
even with the common mouse, with whom he was speci- 
fically allied, until the importation of the voracious grey 
rat (mus decumanus), to whose superior strength he was 
at last obliged to succumb. Thus the pheasant and the 
common partridge had prospered and increased on the 
same manor for centuries, until the latter was in some 
instances turned out of his inheritance by his continental 
relative." 

On the moot point as to the way in which the falcon 
strikes her quarry, the opinion of the author of the 
work before us, which he informs us is fully corrobo- 
rated by the more extensive experience of Colonel 
Bonham, is " that it is by means of the powerful hind 
talon that the deadly wound is inflicted." 

" If a grouse," he adds, " a duck, or a woodcock, that 



THEIR FRIENDS AND THEIR FOES. 205 

lias been suddenly killed by a peregrine, be examined, 
it will generally be found that the loins and shoulders 
are deeply scored, the back of the neck much torn, and 
even the skuU sometimes penetrated by this formidable 
weapon. Now, as the stroke is almost always delivered 
obliquely, that is, in a slanting downward direction from 
behind, this laceration could not be effected by any of 
the talons of the front toes ; nor would the severest pos- 
sible blow from the breast of the falcon produce such an 
effect. Indeed, Colonel Bonham had several rare oppor- 
tunities of witnessing the operation distinctly, and his 
testimony on this point ought to be conclusive." 

The assertion that the Peregrine is not susceptible of 
personal attachment Mr. Knox answers conclusively by 
one of those happy anecdotes which he delights to 
interweave with his ornithological disquisitions. The 
late Colonel Johnson of the Rifle Brigade, having been 
ordered to Canada with his regiment, took with him 
two favourite peregrines as his companions across the 
Atlantic. During the voyage he used to fly them 
every day. At length, however, one of them was lost. 
Shortly after his arrival in Canada a paragraph in a 
Halifax paper induced him to suppose that his missing 
treasure was in the hands of the captain of an American 
schooner lately arrived. Off he set to reclaim her, but 
found that Jonathan by no means liked the idea of 
giving up his prize, and that he even professed to dis- 
believe the story. At length, however, it was agreed 



206 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL : 

that Colonel (then Captain) Johnson's claim to owner- 
ship should be at once put to the test, by an ex- 
periment, which several Americans who were present 
admitted to be perfectly reasonable, and in which their 
countryman was at last persuaded to acquiesce. It was 
this : Captain Johnson was to be admitted to an inter- 
view with the hawk, — who, by the way, had as yet shown 
no partiality for any person since her arrival in the new 
world ; but, on the contrary, had rather repelled all 
attempts at familiarity — and if at this meeting she 
should not only exhibit such unequivocal signs of 
attachment and recognition as should induce the 
majority of the bystanders to believe that he really was 
her original master, but especially if she should play 
with the buttons of his coat, then the American was at 
once to waive all claim to her. The trial was imme- 
diately made. The Yankee went up stairs and shortly 
returned with the falcon ; but the door was hardly 
opened before she darted from his fist and perched at 
once on the shoulder of her beloved and long-lost pro- 
tector, evincing by every means in her power her 
delight and affection, rubbing her head against his 
cheek and taking hold of the buttons of his coat and 
champing them playfully between her mandibles, one 
after another. This was enough. The jury were 
unanimous. A verdict for the plaintiff was pronounced ; 
even the obdurate heart of the sea captain was melted,, 



THEIR FRIENDS AND THEIR FOES. 207 

and the falcon was at once restored to the arms of her 
rightful owner. 

We trust that this work, which is the second, will 
not be the last of Mr. Knox's contributions to popular 
ornithology, into a knowledge of which " with graceful 
negligence " he charms the public. When considered 
with reference to their geographical distribution, and 
the nature of the food and herbs to which their instinct 
guides them, the feathered tribes of England may have 
their history interwoven with geological and botanical 
observations of an interesting and instructive nature. 
Their habits, too, offer analogies without limit, which 
may serve to point a moral as well as to adorn a tale. 
If Mr. Knox will look carefully for these, and make 
the most of them, he may, without growing didactic or 
wearisome through precept, render services of import- 
ance to humanity, and, while advancing his fame as an 
ornithologist, he may win for himself a very honourable 
position in the ranks of England's pleasing benefactors. 

We must not omit to mention Wolfs interesting 
lithographs, with four of which this volume is adorned. 
All are good, but the first, " The Death of the Mallard," 
is exquisitely drawn, and is full of spirit and artistic 
feeling. — December 10, 1850. 



SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE, 

WITH OTHEE POEMS. 
BY THE EEV. GEORGE CEOLY, LL.D., 

AUTHOR OF ' SALATHIEL,' ETC. 



The prose of poets has often furnished critics with a 
topic for unmingled praise. It is not that good prose 
either does or should consist of decasyllabic periods 
without rhyme, but that an ear which habit has made 
familiar with the conditions of successful versification is 
a valuable assistant wherever, as in the case of prose, 
the ear, and the ear only, can be a guide to euphony. 
In other days the prose of Dryden, in our own the prose 
of Southey, Scott, and Lamartine, are instances of a 
double triumph in the two great departments of com- 
position. Byron as a poet is supreme among the 
moderns. He has also written some of the best letters 
in our language. 

The volume now before us commences with an 
interesting specimen of a poet's prose, in the shape of a 
beautifully written preface, which forms an appropriate 
introduction to Dr. Croly's 'Scenes from Scripture.' 
Many points of importance are touched upon with taste 



SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 209 

and judgment in this preface. The following contrast, 
with reference to church singing, between the natural 
and simple practice of the reformed Church of England, 
and the more theatrical practice of the Church of Rome, 
will, together with the glance at the different versions 
of the Psalms, possess, especially in these days, an 
interest for all readers, and serve to fix their attention 
on a distinction of great moment : — 

" In the primitive worship of Christianity, the singing 
of ' Psalms, and Hymns, and Spiritual Songs ' occupied 
an important place. But in the worship of the Komish 
Church, that place was gradually filled by the chant- 
ing of the priests; while in the progress of musical 
science the anthem superseded the simplicity of the 
hymn. In the sixteenth century the Eeformers re- 
stored the singing of the congregation to its original 
rank, and the psalmody of Luther and his successors 
formed a characteristic feature of the popular devotion. 
Whether to counteract this new influence, or to re- 
establish a reputation for piety, Clement Marot, a name 
equally .known in his day for poetry and profligacy, 
in 1539 published a French version of thirty of the 
psalms, and the success of this work was as singular as 
its origin. Dedicated to Francis I., with the imprimatur 
of the Sorbonne, it was welcomed by the monarch 
almost with enthusiasm ; novelty, nationality, and, 
perhaps, rivalry of the Eeformers, made it universally 
popular. Francis and his courtiers selected each a 
psalm for peculiar favouritism, and the most immoral 
court in Europe resounded with religious song. 



210 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE, 

" This was the age of verbal chivalry, and France 
gave the amplest testimony of its spirit by inscribing 
on the tomb of Marot — ' Ci gist des Frangais le Viryile 
et VHomere' The celebrated Calvin, with whom Marot 
was intimate, introduced this version into the Church 
of Geneva, and employed Beza to complete the whole 
number of the Psalms. The faults attributed to Beza's 
performance are, a general tendency to unnecessary 
paraphrase, occasional misconceptions of the original, 
and the use of expressions too familiar for the dignity 
of Scripture. 

" With the Eeformation congregational singing began 
in England. For the first time in a thousand years the 
people were joined with the minister in an important, 
beautiful, and affecting portion of Christian worship. 
Congregational singing now became a public right, and 
the version of the Psalms a public demand. Single 
Psalms were rapidly contributed ; of those the ablest 
were by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
But a general version was required, and this was 
undertaken — unfortunately more to the honour of their 
diligence than of their capacity — by Sternhold and 
Hopkins." 

The following noble tribute to the poets of Judaea is 
at once melodious and apposite : — 

" At the head of all poetry must stand the poets of 
Judaea. I can find, even in the great writers of Greece 
or Eome, no rival to their intensity, richness, and accu- 
mulation of ideas. This is no new conception with 
me. In some observations which I had once occasion 



WITH OTHER POEMS. 211 

to deliver in public I remarked on the variety, force, 
and living grandeur of those illustrious compositions. 
Poured forth to awake the apathy, or rebuke the guilt, 
of kings and people, they perform a duty never required 
of language before, and they were divinely provided 
with a language fitted for the duty. It is a continual 
torrent of pathetic or indignant eloquence. Every 
conceivable image of national suffering and personal 
anguish, every vivid menace of human trial and divine 
vengeance, every possible scene of national struggle 
and individual ruin crowds their predictions. Nations 
fighting the battle of despair ; nations flying before the 
invader ; nations torn from their home, and driven out 
to die among the deserts and under the burning skies 
of a foreign land ; — the sitters under the vine and fig- 
tree of Palestine swept to the swamps of Media, lin- 
gering out life in the Assyrian sands, or dying in the 
labours and chains of Babylon. 

" Their images from nature are not less true or less 
powerful : the scorching winds of the wilderness ; the 
tempest among the sands ; the ruined and lifeless city ; 
the polluted temple ; the land lying awe-struck and 
silent under the pestilence ; ' the sky of brass and the 
soil of iron.' 

" But, in all their diversities of style they have an 
impress which raises them above earthly comparison. 
They speak with the authority of an inspired mission. 
Their language has a purpose altogether divine. They 
lavish their powers on no rich description of nature, 
and no luxuriant display of their genius. Their lan- 
guage is not born of flesh and blood. Like the Israelites 



212 SCENES FEOM SCEIPTUEE, 

in the Babylonian furnace, they walk in fire, they speak 
in fire, and with them ' walketh one,' more than man, a 
protecting and inspiring glory. 

" I would almost assume that the severe grandeur of 
the primitive Greek poetry was derived from Judaea. 
It seems to me that the very tone of Homer is Scrip- 
tural, and that in his sonorous simplicity I hear the 
echoes of the prophetic trumpet, only softened by the 
airs of his Ionian shore." 

As a poet Dr. Croly has already an ascertained posi- 
tion with the public, and it is not probable that any 
observations which we might make would add to or 
subtract anything from it. We must, however, direct 
attention to a fine passage from a poem entitled ' Balak 
and Balaam :' — 

" 'Twas eve — the flame was feeble now, 
Was dried the victim's burning blood ; 
The sun was sinking broad and low, — 
King Balak by the Prophet stood. 

' Now, curse, or die ! ' The echoing roar 

Around him like a tempest came ; 
Again the altar stream'd with gore, 

And flush'd again the sky with flame. 

The Prophet was in prayer ; he rose, 

His mantle from his face was flung ; 
He listen' d, where the mighty foes 

To Heav'n their evening anthem sung. 

He saw their camp, like sunset clouds 
Mix'd with the Desert's distant blue ; 

Saw on the plain their marshall'd crowds, 
Heard the high strain their trumpets blew. 



WITH OTHER POEMS. 213 

; Young Lion of the Desert sand,' 

Burst from his lip the Prophet-cry, 
' What strength before thy strength shall stand ? 

What hunter meet thee, but to fly ? 

' Come, Heav'n-crown'd Lord of Palestine, 
Lord of her plain, her mountain throne ; 

Lord of her olive and her vine ; 

Come, King of Nations, claim thine own. 

' Be Israel cursed ! ' was in his soul, 

But on his lips the wild words died ; 
He paused, till night on Israel stole ; 

Still wa"s the fearful curse untried. 

Now wilder on his startled ear, 

From Moab's hills and valleys dim, 
Bose the fierce clash of shield and spear, 

Bose the mad yells of Baalim. 

How shall I curse whom God has blest ? 

With whom he dwells, with whom shall dwell ? 
He clasp'd his pale hands on his breast ; 

' Then be thou blest, Israel ! ' 

A whirlwind from the desert rush'd, 

Deep thunders echoed round the hill ; 
King, Prophet, multitude, were hush'd ! 

The thunders sank, the blast was still. 

Broad on the East, a new-born Star, 

On cloud, vale, desert, pour'd its blaze ; 
The Prophet knew the sign afar, 

And on it fix'd his shuddering gaze. 

I shall behold Him — but not now ; 

I shall behold him — but not nigh : 
He comes beneath the Cross to bow, 

To toil, to triumph, and to die. 

All power is in His hand ; the world 

Is dust beneath His trampling heel ; 
The thunder from His lips is hurl'd, 

The heavens beneath His presence reel. 



214 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 

He comes a stranger to His own ; 

With the wild bird and fox he lies ; 
The King who makes the stars His throne, 

A wand'rer lives, an outcast dies ! " 

Towards the end of the volume there are some poems 
on classical subjects, such as ' The Wanderings of Io,' 
and ' The Furies ; ' in the introduction to the latter of 
which the author justly observes that " without entering 
in some degree into the details of mythology we can 
scarcely conceive from what a burden of fear and folly 
the general mind has been relieved by true ideas on the 
subject of Religion." 

We must now take our leave of Dr. Croly and his 
volume. His preface, which we take to be the latest of 
his productions, shows that, although he is no longer 
young, the glow of youthful fancy and of mental vigour 
remains to spread its sunshine over age. We trust 
that it will long beam forth with undiminished bright- 
ness. — July 26, 1851. 






FABIS SHIDIAK AND HIS POEM, 

ADDKESSED TO THE QUEEN. 



The following is a free version of an Arabic poem 
recently addressed to the Queen by Faris Shidiak, a 
native of Syria, and now sojourning in this country. 
The author was some time since employed, by the Society 
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to translate the 
Prayer Book into Arabic, and it is to him that the 
Society are indebted for the version which they now cir- 
culate in the East. He has recently completed for the 
same Society a new translation of the Bible into Arabic, 
and is at present engaged in superintending the passage 
of his version through the press. 

Faris Shidiak has obtained great reputation as a 
poet. Some time since he dedicated a poem in his 
native language to the Bey of Tunis, who, on receiving 
it, sent a vessel of war to convey the author from Malta 
to Tunis ; and on his arrival at the latter place re- 
warded him with presents and money to the amonnt of 
about 4007. 

His brother, Assad Shidiak, a deacon of the Maronite 
Church in Syria, was a man of considerable theological 



216 FARIS SHIDIAK AND HIS POEM. 

attainments. He was converted to Protestantism by an 
American missionary, to whom he had given instruc- 
tions in the Syriac language. His conversion alarmed 
the Maronite Patriarch Yoossoof Hoobeish, who endea- 
voured by promises to induce him to retrace his steps ; 
but, finding that promises were of no avail, he had re- 
course to threats, and upon this Assad fled, and took 
refuge in the house of an American missionary at 
Beirout. Here he remained some little time. Assad's 
family were then prevailed upon by the Patriarch to go 
to their relative, and induce him, if possible, to return 
to his home in the neighbourhood of Beirout. In this 
they succeeded ; and about a month after his return he 
was taken to the Patriarch by his relatives, including 
Faris, who was then about twenty years of age, and 
still a Maronite. The Patriarch detained Assad for 
some time at his palace at Kesrawan, in Mount Leba- 
non, near Beirout, under the strictest surveillance. He 
afterwards took him to his more distant palace, Kano- 
bin, also situate in Mount Lebanon ; and there he 
remained a prisoner in a cellar for several years, until 
at length he died, the victim of ecclesiastical intolerance 
and persecution. His crime — a dark and deadly one, 
no doubt, in the eyes of Borne and her dependents- 
was an exercise of private judgment. 

The fact of his death was subsequently discovered by 
Mr. Todd, an English merchant, who obtained an escort 



FAKIS SHIDIAK AND HIS POEM. 217 

from Ibrahim Pasha, and with it went in search of 
Assad. His brother Faris had become a Protestant, 
and had fled from Beirout to Malta some time pre- 
viously to his brother's death. 

The following free version has been hastily written, 
together with this notice, by a gentleman who has 
studied Arabic with the author, and who is anxious, 

through the kind assistance of the editor of , 

to make known his presence in this country to 
those who may be desirous of obtaining instruction 
in that language. It is trusted that this statement 
may sufficiently excuse any defects which may be 
noticed in the translation. In some parts, for the 
sake of brevity, two verses of the original have been 
condensed into one, and he has endeavoured to tone 
down some of the compliments, which run on through- 
out the poem in a thoroughly Oriental strain. The 
Arabic poem is in the metre termed " Basit," and con- 
sists of 88 verses. The rhyme is the same throughout, 
each of the verses rhyming, as it is termed, in Ra. In 
Arabic poetry a word containing a rhyme cannot be 
repeated, in a similar position, unless after an interval 
of seven verses ; and in this poem, notwithstanding its 
great length, two words only of those which contain the 
rhyme are so repeated. 

" In the west a light hath risen. Oh ! how beautiful a light, 
Winch through all the east hath scattered the darkness of the night ! 



218 FAPJS SHIDIAK AND HIS POEM. 

It Las risen full of brightness in a kingdom great and glorious, 

Over which a gentle lady reigns, in name and deeds victorious. 

She was born to high distinction such as mortals seldom gain ; 

Where has earth a glory brighter than the glory of her reign ? 

In her might the world exulteth ; she is ready to befriend 

Poor or weak who claim protection, to the earth's remotest end. 

In far provinces with gratitude her name is usher'd in, 

Though another where he dwelleth fails the meed of praise to win. 

Great by rank, by virtue greater, to her sex an empire's Queen 

An example of domestic love and gentleness hath been. 

She hath raised the sex she bears to higher dignity and fame ; 

In the presence of her virtues let not man precedence claim. 

If the sunshine leave her kingdom, shame hath put the sun to 

flight ; 
For the sunshine of her countenance is lovelier than his light. 

In her reign the days of plenty and of peace the nation bless, 

Which exulteth without measure in its ruler's mightiness. 

Time, with borrow'd light, would seem a long and daily festival ; 

And the sunshine of a happy look sits smilingly on all. 

Through her kingdom in tranquillity her citizens repose ; 

Peace around then toil and industry unnumber'd blessings throws. 

While through other lands the storm of change and revolution sweeps, 

Order o'er her favour'd kingdom still unbroken vigil keeps. 

Seems by Fortune to her high designs accomplishment decreed — 

Seems by Fortune banish'd all that else their progress might impede : 

Fortune waits a humble minister, her whisper to obey, 

Fortune, whom as ' slave with downcast eyes,' a painter might portray. 

None who refuge in her kingdom take shall be oppress'd with wrong ; 

Fate hath will'd that e'en the feeble grow, 'neath her protection, 
strong. 

Men, though ever in their feelings and their thoughts divided seen, 

Bid their idle discord cease, and join in praise of England's Queen. 

Crowded hall in which her name is breathed, its incense sweet 
perfumes ; 

In- my ink its radiance glitters, and- its light my page illumes. 

Bold inventions, bright and numberless, her fostering aid inspires ; 

Through the air thought's lightning current sweeps along the elec- 
tric wires. 



FARIS SHIDIAK AND HIS POEM. 219 

Far through water's realm her vessels glide, and plough the trackless 

seas, 
While o'er subject ports her banner floats victorious in the breeze. 
Eoads of iron, signs of industry and progress, fill the land, 
Speech is powerless to flatter, and the mind to understand. 
Happy land ! whose noble sons contemn not Truth, nor Falsehood 



prize 



Faultless — faulty only in the snare that lurks in beauty's eyes. 
Slow is man, in his bewilderment, a resting place to choose, 
Form'd by nature, all its regions seem, new transport to diffuse ; 
Something ever to delight the eye the traveller will find, 
Something ever to invigorate, refresh, enlarge the mind. 
Wonder not that Heav'n to England gave dominion o'er the sea, 
Largely she has thought for other lands and for humanity. 
Vainly would my pen her toils for others' weal enumerate : 
Of her children some together link the Truth to propagate ; 
Some the boundaries of science and of knowledge to extend ; 
Some to foster Peace, and change the name of enemy to friend. 
Some would charity diffuse, and some the slave would liberate : 
Mighty people which Earth's nations all acknowledge good and 

great. 
Change and fickleness are here alone of climate understood ; 
But they vary not man's high resolve, and fix'd intent for good. 
England's sons excel in science, and with holy purpose strive, 
Bid philanthropy with learning and philosophy revive. 
Through the earth's remotest realms her name is honour'd far and 

wide ; 
Through the Desert's trackless sands her fame the traveller shall 

guide. 
Hopeless 'twere, with Time upon the wing, to count the trophies 

won, 
Or to tell of all that English hearts and England's Queen have 

done. 
Staff which hero in her armies bears a sceptre may subdue ; 
And the coward, at her bidding arm'd, courageous prove and true. 
Shall not Syria's shatter'd fortresses of England's glory tell ? 
Shall not India, whose rebellious chiefs against her rose and fell ? 
Shall not China, who disdainfully in myriads placed her trust, 
Till her overweening power and pride were humbled to the dust ? 

L 2 



220 FAEIS SHIDIAK AND HIS POEM. 

See the negro too, in distant lands, from long oppression free, 
All the homage of a willing heart now renders gratefully ! 
These are glories brighter, nobler far than tales of heroes bold 
In the chronicles of ancient song by gifted minstrels told. 
These are conquests mightier far than all the boasted triumphs won 
By the countless host of Caesar, or by Philip's warlike son. 
Oh, may England and her Queen in Heav'n their sure Protector see ! 
May Heav'n lead them in the paths of peace to glories yet to be ! 
May it shield an Empire's destiny from heedless change and wrong, 
And to her, her spouse and children dear, a life of bliss prolong ! 
In the firmament of England, as Sun, Moon, and Stars they shine, 
But the Sun which gilds Arabian song is ever feminine.* 
When the youngest of those stars appear'd to greet my op'ning lay, 
'Twas an omen of the brightness that should crown the coming day. 
If, as wise men oft have told us, stars control our earthly state, 
Then my lay their purest influence shall long perpetuate. 
Blessings on thee, gentle lady ! to thy loving sight be given 
All the brightness of the stars that shine upon a mother's heaven ! " 

1851. 



* In Arabic, as also in German, the Sun is of the feminine gender. 



S L W AN; 

OR, WATEES OF COMFOET. 



By IBN ZAFEE, &c. 

FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS. BY MICHELE AMARI. 



The roses gathered in the gardens of the East have 
a peculiar, but ever-grateful perfume. This perfume, 
though frequently overpowering, is generally redolent 
of something with which our senses were previously 
unacquainted, and which cannot be compared, except 
for the sake of contrast, with the odours of flowers 
which grow in colder latitudes. If, after inhaling the 
perfume of the blossoms, we pass to their organic 
structure, we find marks of mechanical arrangement 
altogether at variance with those with which habit had 
rendered us familiar. If in such arrangement we 
occasionally regret the absence of contrivance and plan 
adapted to our tastes, our attention is, at all events 
arrested by the novelty, and very often by the gro- 
tesqueness, of the design. 

The work now before us is by no means an exception 
to, but rather an illustration of, these remarks. There 
are evident internal marks of the stock from which its 

l3 



222 SOLWAN ; OR, WATERS OF COMFORT. 

author sprung. It is a treatise concerning the political 
conduct of sovereigns, written in Sicily in the twelfth 
century, under the rule of the early Norman kings, hy 
an Arab and a Mahometan, a native of the island, and 
learned in all the wisdom of his race in theology, 
philosophy, and morality. It offers at the same time 
a very ancient and interesting specimen of the historical 
romance, and comprises imitations, which are hy no 
means servile, of those fascinating Indian fables which 
the Persian and Arabian writers introduced into Europe 
seven centuries before the time at which the study of 
the Sanscrit language had made us acquainted with 
the originals. It is, moreover, interesting from the 
light which it serves to throw on the habits of thought, 
the philosophy, feelings, and social life of that marvel- 
lous Arabian nation, which, in the eleventh century, 
fell prostrate, having, in 400 years, run through the 
whole cycle of its rise, ascendency, and gradual 
decline. 

A brief analysis of the work is giveu in the trans- 
lator's introduction. The author seeks to point out the 
modes of conduct to be pursued by sovereigns in the 
vicissitudes of their fortunes, which he classifies, with 
philosophic ingenuity, under five heads : — 1. To trust 
in God ; that is, to advance resolutely towards the goal 
if the cause be just, and to abandon the design if it be 
unjust. 2. To hold on their way with fortitude until 



SOLWAN ; OE, WATERS OF COMFORT. 223 

the tempest be overpast. 3. To persevere. 4. To 
submit to the will of God should the issue prove unfor- 
tunate. 5. To consider the vanity of earthly power, 
and to lay it aside if it prove too heavy a burden. 

The author of the book ("whose sins may God 
assoil ! ") commences each division of his work with 
precepts of the Koran, maxims of Mahomet and others, 
and then goes on to illustrate their application by nar- 
ratives of real or of supposed eveDts, interspersed with 
that remarkable combination of poetry, proverb, anec- 
dote, and apologue or fable, in which the writers of 
Oriental fiction are known peculiarly to delight. The 
fables are dovetailed into each other to an indefinite, 
and sometimes rather inconvenient, extent. Thus, for 
instance, in the fable of the Bear and the Monkey, 
introduced, as an illustration, into the chapter on Con- 
tentment, we find the following exemplification of this 
process : — 

" The monkey replied to the menaces of the bear, — 
' I am not so ill-disposed as you think ; and, if you were 
to kill me, you would have cause to repent, as the miller 
did when he killed his ass.' — ' Tell me that story,' said 
the bear ; and the monkey resumed." 

Then follows the fable of the Miller and his Ass, 
known to all who have read (and who has not ?) the 
' Arabian Nights,' in the excellent translation by Mr. 



224 SOLWAN; OR, WATERS OF COMFORT. 

Lane. This process of running fable into fable is 
repeated till the narrative becomes confused and com- 
plicated, and the mind of the reader is needlessly 
fatigued by the amount of attention which it requires 
to disentangle and carry through the train of incident 
and thought. This, however, is an inconvenience for 
which the author, and not the translator, is responsible. 
Possibly it might be remedied by some new arrange- 
ment without doing further violence to the original than 
would result from the partial dislocation of the Arabic 
text. We think also that the large mass of valuable 
materials contained in the introduction and the notes 
might be in some respects improved by more lucid 
combination and arrangement. 

The resignation which so eminently distinguishes the 
professors of the faith of Islam is emphatically enjoined 
in the following curious passage, which occurs in a 
tradition concerning Mahomet, related in the * Mosnad ' 
of Moslim : — 

" On one occasion the Prophet conversing with Abu 
Horaira said unto him — ' When any unpleasant event 
befalls you, do not say, " If I had but acted thus and 
thus ;" say rather, " Such is God's decree — may His will 
be done ! " For the " if" opens the breach to Satan, 
and assuredly does not lead either to trust in God, or 
resignation to His will.' 

" Every one may see that the Prophet forbade the 
expression ' if,' as rejecting implicit trust in God, 



SOLWAN; OE, WATERS OF COMFORT. 225 

and conducing to opposition to bis decrees, and the de- 
sire of resistance to his will." 

The following passages are in an elevated key, and 
exhibit an enlightened Arab's notion of that large, 
and, let us add, that Christian sympathy, which, by 
riveting society together, proves one of the truest safe- 
guards of the state : — 

" Do I not know that, amongst all the deeds that 
spring from a generous spirit, kindness to the afflicted 
is that which finds most favour in the eyes of God ? 

" It was said that we are all united in a mutual bond 
of insurance against the misfortunes that may befall 
any individual, and amongst those who are at ease the 
most prosperous will be he who regards as his own the 
calamity that befalls his neighbour, and who benefits 
him, first by relieving his distress, and afterwards by 
admonishing him to avoid a repetition of his fault, and 
consequent return of his misfortune ; so that the sufferer 
should always be grateful to him, and should be careful 
not to fall a second time into adversity." 

The maxims of state policy are often in an equally 
elevated strain, and highly creditable to the author. 
The moral precepts too are excellent, and of these we 
may take the following as an example. It inculcates a 
manly love of truth by glancing at one of the social ills 
entailed by falsehood. It was said, — 

" The most arduous undertaking upon which a man 



226 SOLWAN; OE, WATERS OF COMFORT. 

can enter is to associate with a companion whose vera- 
city he cannot trust." 

Ignorance is condemned in the following enlightened 
precept : — 

"Be on thy guard against the ignorant man, for he 
sins against his own soul, nor can he esteem thee more 
than it." 

The anecdotical narratives are, many of them, cha- 
racteristic, and we regret that want of space prevents 
us from giving fuller specimens of them. That of the 
abdication of a king of the Hellenes, of which the 
translator tells us that he can find no (historical) trace, 
is very curious and . characteristic of Arabian life and 
thought, to which, rejecting its imputed Grecian 
parentage, we cannot but feel that it belongs : — 

"Abdication of a King of the Hellenes. 

" It is related of a king of the ancient Greeks, that, on 
rising one morning from his bed, the mistress of the 
robes brought him his clothes. "When he was dressed, 
the maiden presented a looking-glass to him, in which 
he contemplated himself, and, seeing that he had a 
white hair in his beard, he said to her — * Damsel, give 
me those scissors;' and when she brought him the 
scissors, he cut out the white hair and gave it to the 
damsel, who, being quick-witted and of a cultivated 
understanding, laid the hair in the palm of her hand, 
held it to her ear, and remained for some time in a 



SOLWAN; OR, WATERS OF COMFOET. 227 

listening attitude. The king looked at her fixedly, and 
then inquired what she was doing, to which she replied 
— ' I am listening to the words of this white hair, whose 
appearance is sufficient to disturb the highest dignity 
that exists on earth, since a king is enraged against it, 
and seeks to exterminate it.' — ' And what do you gather 
from its words ? ' asked the king again ; and the damsel 
replied — ' My understanding thinks to hear it utter a 
discourse which my tongue dares not repeat, for fear of 
anger to the king.' — ' Say what you will,' returned the 
monarch, ' and fear nothing so long as you tread the 
paths of wisdom.' And thereupon the damsel continued 
thus: — ' The white hair says, " O, powerful ephemeris 
of the earth! I judged rightly that you would seize 
upon me and maltreat me ; therefore I did not show 
myself above your skin until I had laid my eggs and 
hatched them, and seen my little ones come forth, to 
whom I have bequeathed the charge of making you pay 
the penalty of my death. And they are already grown, 
and have set to work to avenge me, so that they will 
either slay you on a sudden, or they will trouble all 
your pleasure and undermine your strength until at last 
death shall seem to you a relief." ' — ' Write down that 
discourse,' answered the king ; and when the damsel 
had done so, he read it once and again, and then hast- 
ened with all speed to a temple of great renown, where, 
having laid aside his regal robes, he assumed the habits 
of the priests of that sanctuary. This becoming known 
to his subjects, they hastened to the temple, vying with 
each other in their prayers to him to return to the palace, 
and to resume the government of his kingdom. But he 
would not hear of it, and insisted that they should con- 



228 SOLWAN; OR, WATERS OF COMFORT. 

sent to his abdication, and raise up another king in his 
stead ; while his subjects, on their side, would not yield, 
but tried every means of dissuading him from his pur- 
pose. At length the priests interposed, and it was 
stipulated that the king should stay and worship God in 
the sanctuary, and should administer such part of the 
affairs of the state as he should think fit, and commit the 
rest to others. And this he did so long as he lived. 
And God knows whether all this be true." 

We are happy to find that the work in question is 
only part of a most extensive plan formed by Monsieur 
Amari. He tells us too that he has every preparation 
made for the publication of the work of Ibn Zafer in 
the original language. To secure the publication of 
this work, for the benefit of the students and lovers of 
the Arabian language, would be an enterprise well 
worthy of some such wealthy nobleman as the Earl of 
Ellesmere, or of some such liberal patron of Oriental 
literature as the Duke of Northumberland is known to 
be. We hope that if published it will be printed with 
the vowel points, which are of the utmost value and 
importance to students. 

If the Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, 
the subscription to which is only two guineas a -year, 
were better supported by the public than it is, either 
by donations or subscriptions, we should not be eclipsed 
as we are at present by the French and Germans in 
this honourable field of literary exertion. The Uni- 
versities, too, might judiciously set apart some portion 



SOLWAN; OR, WATERS OF COMFORT. 229 

of their revenues for the purpose of giving to the 
world the texts of those treasures of Arabian learning 
which now lie buried in manuscript in their noble 
libraries. In Preston, whose translation of ' Hariri ' is 
a most able and conscientious work, Cambridge boasts 
a scholar fully competent to the revision of Arabic 
or Hebrew texts. Oxford, whose zeal in this respect 
seems to have fallen asleep in the seventeenth century, 
when Pocock died, might surely find some one fitted to 
superintend the task of unlocking the treasures of the 
Bodleian. The East India Company, too, we think, 
might in this respect, with credit to itself, engage in a 
career of honourable rivalry with the Universities of 
Oxford and Cambridge. But, whatever is done, let the 
example of Freytag be followed, and let the texts be 
published with the vowel points. As regards the addi- 
tional labour and expense attending the insertion of 
the vowel points, we can only say, better few texts with 
than many without them. 

With the perusal of Ibn Zafer's work we have been 
both edified and delighted, and can only regret that 
such works come but to illumine our pathway, "like 
angel- visits, few and far between." — March 20, 1852. 



LONDON? 

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